Necroscope n-1

by Brian Lumley

  As usual, after the stones had been collected and piled up, the boys were allowed to do their own thing for an hour before carrying their booty back to the school. ‘Gee-gee’ Gower, (as her pupils sometimes called her, referring to her equine aspect as much as her initials) was giving instructions to a bunch of reluctant non-swimmers in a tidal pool; George Hannant and Jean Tasker stood down by the edge of the sea, gathering shells and bright pebbles, chatting and generally passing the time of day. That was when Big Stanley, who could no longer contain his vindictiveness, saw his opportunity to ‘teach Keogh a lesson’.

  Harry had been off on his own, head down, hands behind his back, beachcombing; but as he returned to the pile of stones he looked up and spotted Green and a large handful of the others waiting for him.

  ‘Well, well!’ sneered the bully, pushing his way to the front of the crowd. ‘And if it isn’t our little teacher’s pet — little skinny Speccy Keogh — with a fistful of pretty shells for daft old Gee-gee! How’s things then, Speccy? How d’you fancy your chances with this “special” exam they’ve fixed it for you to take, eh?’

  ‘Reckon you’ll pass it, do you then, Speccy?’ said another, his voice hard-edged. ‘They’ll push you through it, will they?’

  ‘Oh, he’s “favourite”, all right!’ said a third. ‘What, him? Teacher’s pet and all — how can he fail?’

  Jimmy Collins, towelling himself dry as he came up the beach, saw the mood of the crowd at once but said nothing. Instead he went to the rear of the group, wrapped a towel round his waist and started to dress.

  ‘Well?’ Green prodded Harry in the chest. ‘How about it, four-eyes? Are the nice teachers going to let you pass your little exam, then — so you can get away from all us nasty rough boys and go to school in Hartlepool with the rest of the fairies?’

  Harry staggered backward from the other’s shoving, dropping the shells he’d collected. Big Stanley gave a whoop, jumped forward, crushed them to dust under his shoes and ground them into the sand. Harry swayed, looked sick, began to turn away. His eyes were suddenly misty behind his spectacles; his face, which wasn’t tanned like the faces of the rest, turned even paler.

  ‘Shitty little cowardly teacher’s pet!’ Green crowed maliciously. ‘Old Man Jamieson’s little “Favourite”, eh, Speccy? And is that you crying, then? Tears, is it? Wetting ourself, are we? You four-eyed little — ‘

  ‘Shut it, shithead!’ Harry growled, turning back and facing the bully. ‘You’re ugly enough without me making it worse!’

  ‘Wha-?’ Green couldn’t believe his ears. What was that Keogh had said? No, it couldn’t have been. Why, it hadn’t even sounded like him. He must have a frog in his throat, or he was all choked up with fear.

  ‘Whyn’t you leave him alone?’ said Jimmy Collins, pushing through the crowd. Three or four of them grabbed him, held him back.

  ‘Stay out of it, Jimmy,’ said Harry in his new, gritty voice. ‘I’m all right.’

  ‘All right, is it?’ cried Big Stanley. I’ll say you’re not, Speccy my son. I’ll say you’re — in — the — shit!’-

  With his last word he swung his fist for the smaller boy’s head. Harry ducked easily, stepped forward, jabbed with a straight arm, fingers straight and stiff. Big Stanley folded in the middle, jack-knifed, his face coming down on Harry’s knee — which was coming up! The crack was like a pistol shot. Green straightened up and flew backward, his arms straight out from his shoulders. And down he crashed on the sand.

  Harry stepped close. Seconds passed but Green just lay there. Then he sat up, shook his head groggily. His nose was the wrong shape, bleeding profusely; his eyes were glassy behind welling tears of pain. ‘You… you… you!’ he spat blood.

  Harry bent over him, showed him a white, knobbly fist. ‘You what?’ he growled, the corner of his mouth lifting from his teeth. ‘Go on, Bully, say something. Give me a reason to hit you again.’

  Green said nothing, reached up a trembling hand to touch his broken nose, his split mouth. Then he started to cry real tears.

  But Harry wasn’t finished with him. He wanted him to remember. ‘Listen, shithead,’ he said. ‘If ever — if you ever once — call me Speccy or Favourite or any other bloody funny name again — if you even speak to me, I’ll hit you so hard you’ll be shitting teeth for a month! Have you got that, shithead?’

  Big Stanley turned on his side in the sand and cried even harder.

  Harry looked up, glared at the rest of them. He took off his spectacles, put them in a pocket, scowled. He didn’t squint, didn’t look as though he’d needed the glasses at all. His eyes were bright as marbles, full of sparks. ‘What I said to this shit goes for the rest of you. Or if any one of you fancies his chances here and now — ?’

  Jimmy Collins stepped beside him. ‘Or any two of you?’ he said. The crowd was silent. As a man, all their mouths were wide, their eyes even wider. Slowly they turned away, began talking, nervously laughing, fooling about as if nothing had happened. It was over — and strangely, they were all glad it was over.

  ‘Harry,’ said Jimmy quietly out of the corner of his mouth, ‘I never seen anything like that! Not ever. Why, you did it like — like — like a man! Like a grown man! Like old ‘Sergeant’ when he used to shadow-fight in the gym. Unarmed combat, he called it.’ He elbowed his pal in the ribs — but gingerly. ‘Hey, you know something?’

  ‘What?’ Harry asked, trembling all over, his voice his own again.

  ‘You’re weird, you are, Harry Keogh. You’re really weird!’

  Harry Keogh sat his examination a fortnight later.

  The weather had changed in the first week of September, since when it had grown progressively worse until the sky seemed permanently filled with rain. It rained on the day of the examination, too, a downpour which washed the windows of the head’s study where Harry sat at a huge desk with his papers and pens.

  Jack Harmon himself invigilated, seated behind his own desk, reading the minutes of (and adding his comments and recommendations to) the observations and notes of the last Staff Meeting. But while he worked, occasionally he would look up, glance at the boy, wonder about him.

  Actually, Harmon didn’t particularly want Harry Keogh at the Tech. Not for any personal motive — not even because he half felt that he’d been pushed into this unheard-of situation: that of being obliged to test a boy who had, quite simply, already missed his chance — but because it might set an unfortunate precedent. Time was precious enough without extra work of this sort being found or manufactured. Exams were exams: they were held annually and the colliery boys who passed them had the opportunity to finish their final years of schooling here, where perhaps they could go on to better things than their fathers had known. The system was long-established and worked very well. But this new thing — Howard Jamieson pushing the Keogh boy forward like this…

  On the other hand, the headmaster at Harden Modern Boys’ was a proven friend from the old days, and it was also true that Harmon owed him a favour or two. Even so, when Jamieson had first approached him on the subject, Harmon had been cool about it; but the other had persisted. Finally Harmon’s curiosity had been aroused: he’d wanted to see this ‘teenage prodigy’ for himself. At the same time, however, and as stated, he had not wanted to set any sort of precedent. He had looked for an easy way out and believed he’d found one. He himself had set the questions, choosing only the most difficult problems from the last six years’ examination papers. No boy of Keogh’s educational background could possibly hope to answer them (not all of them, anyway, and certainly not correctly) but while the examination itself would almost constitute a farce, still Harmon would be able to look at examples of Keogh’s work and so satisfy his curiosity. Jamieson, too, would have been mollified, at least in respect of his request that the boy be tested; Keogh’s failure would destroy the credibility of any further, like requests in the future. And so Jack Harmon invigilated, keeping an eye on the boy while he worked at the papers.

 
An hour had been allowed for each subject; there were to be ten-minute breaks between subjects; tea and biscuits would be served right here in the head’s study during the breaks, and a staff toilet was right next door. The first paper had been the English exam, following which Keogh had sat quietly drinking his tea, staring pallidly at the rain beyond the windows. Now he was half-way into the maths paper — or should be. That was a moot point.

  Harmon had watched him. The boy’s pen had seemed barely to scratch the answer paper; or if it had, then it was during those moments when the Tech’s headmaster had been busy with his own work. Oh, the boy had been hard enough at it through the first hour, the first test: the English paper had seemed to interest him, he’d done a lot of frowning and pen-chewing and had written and rewritten — indeed he’d still been working when Harmon had called time — but the maths paper obviously had him stumped. He made the occasional, sporadic attempt at it, Harmon must give him that much (and there he went again, even now, his pen flying, scratching away) but after only a moment or two he’d sit back, stare out of the windows, go pale and quiet again, almost as if he were exhausted.

  Then he would appear to pick up, glance at the next question, scribble away at frantic speed, as if inspired — before pausing again, exhausted — and so on. Harmon could well understand his tension or anxiety or whatever it was: the questions were very difficult. There were six of them, each one of which would normally take at least a quarter of an hour to complete — and only then if the boy’s aptitude was well in advance of his years and present level of education at Harden Modern.

  What Harmon couldn’t understand was why he bothered at all, why he kept making these furious attacks on the paper, only to sit back each time after a little while, frustrated and tired. Wasn’t it obvious to him that he couldn’t win? What were his thoughts as he gazed out of the windows? Where was he when his face took on that blank, almost vacant expression?

  Maybe Harmon should stop this now, put an end to it. Plainly the lad wasn’t getting anywhere…

  They were now (the headmaster glanced at his watch) thirty-five minutes into the maths section. As the boy sat back yet again, his arms dangling and his eyes half-closed behind the lenses of his spectacles, so Harmon quietly stood up and approached him from the rear. Outside, the rain was blowing in gusts against the windowpanes; in here, an old clock ticked on the wall, pacing the head’s breathing. He glanced over Keogh’s shoulder, not really knowing what he expected to see.

  His glance became a fixed stare. He blinked, blinked again, and his eyes opened wide. His eyebrows drew together as he craned his neck the better to see. If Keogh heard his gasp of astonishment he made no sign, remained seated, continued to gaze blearily at the rain rivering the windows.

  Harmon took a step backwards away from the boy, turned and went back to his desk. He seated himself, slid open a drawer, held his breath and took out the answers to the maths section. Keogh had not only answered the questions, he’d got them right! All of them! That last frenzied burst of work had been him working on the sixth and last. Moreover he’d accomplished it with the very minimum of rough work and hardly any use at all of the familiar and accepted formulae.

  Finally the head allowed himself a deep, deep breath, gawped again at the printed answer sheets in his hand — the masses of complicated workings and neatly resolved solutions — then carefully placed them back in the drawer and slid it shut. He could hardly credit it. If he hadn’t been sitting here through the entire examination, he’d swear the boy must have cheated. But quite obviously, that was not the case. So… what did Harmon have here?

  ‘Intuitive,’ Howard Jamieson had called the boy, an intuitive mathematician’. Very well, Harmon would see how well (if at all) this intuition of his worked with the next paper. Meanwhile –

  The headmaster rubbed his chin and stared thoughtfully at the back of Keogh’s head. He must speak to both Jamieson and young George Hannant (who’d first brought the boy to Jamieson’s attention, apparently) at greater length. These were early days, of course, but… intuition? It seemed to Harmon that there just might be another word for what Keogh was, one which the teachers it Harden simply hadn’t thought to apply. Harmon could well understand that, for he too was reluctant. > The word in Harmon’s mind was ‘genius’, and if this was so then certainly there was a place for Keogh at the Tech. Harmon would soon discover if he was right. And of course he was. It was only in his application that he was wrong. Keogh’s ‘genius’ lay in an entirely different direction.

  Jack Harmon was short, fat, hirsute and generally apish. He would be quite ugly except that he exuded a friendlin ess and an aura of well-being that cut right through his outer guise to show the man inside for what he really was: one of Nature’s truest gentlemen. He also had a quite brilliant mind.

  In Harmon’s younger days he had known George Hannant’s father. That was when J. G. Hannant had been head at Harden and Harmon had taught elementary Maths and Science at a tiny school in Morton, another colliery village. On and off over the intervening years he’d met the younger Hannant and so watched him grow up. It had come as no great surprise to him to learn that George Hannant, too, had finally come into ‘the business’ — teaching must be as much a part of him as it had been of his father.

  ‘Young Hannant’, Harmon had always thought of him. Ridiculous — for of course George had been a teacher now for almost twenty years!

  Harmon had called the Maths teacher down from his own school to Hartlepool in order to talk to him about Harry Keogh. It was the Monday following Keogh’s ‘examination’ and they had met at the Tech. Harmon lived close by and had taken the younger man home with him for a lunch of cold meats and pickles. His wife, knowing it was business, served the food then went shopping while the two men ate and talked. Harmon opened with an apology:

  ‘I hope it isn’t inconvenient for you, George, to be called away like this? I know Howard keeps you pretty busy up there.’

  Hannant nodded. ‘No problem at all. “Himself is standing in for me this afternoon. He likes to take a crack at it now and then. Says he “misses” the classroom. I’m sure he’d swap that study of his — and the admin that goes with it — for a classroom full of boys any time!’

  ‘Oh, he would, he would! Wouldn’t we all?’ Harmon grinned. ‘But it’s the money, George, it’s the money!

  And I suppose the prestige has a little to do with it, too. You’ll know what I mean when you’re a “head” in your ‘own right. Now then, tell me about Keogh. You’re the one who discovered him, aren’t you?’

  ‘I think it’s truer to say he discovered himself,’ Hannant answered. ‘It’s as if he’s only recently woken up to his town potential. A late starter, so to speak.’ ‘But one who’s all set to overtake the rest of the runners in a flash, eh?’

  ‘Ah!’ said Hannant. Since Harmon hadn’t yet said: anything about the results of Keogh’s tests, he had half-feared that the boy had failed. Being called down here had reassured him a little, and now Harmon’s remark about Keogh ‘overtaking the rest’ had clinched it. ‘He passed then?

  ‘Hannant smiled.

  ‘No,’ Harmon shook his head. ‘He failed — miserably! ‘ The English paper let him down. He tried hard, I believe, but-‘

  Hannant’s smile faded. His shoulders slumped a little. ‘ — but I’m taking him anyway,’ Harmon finished, grinning again as Hannant’s wide eyes came up once more to meet his. ‘On the strength of what he did with the other papers.’ ‘What he did with them?’

  Harmon nodded. ‘I admit that I gave him the most difficult questions I could find — and he made mincemeat of them! If he has any fault at all, I’d say it was his unorthodox approach — if that in itself is a fault. It’s just that he seems to dispense with all the customary ‘ formulae.’

  Hannant nodded, made no comment, thought: / know exactly what you mean! And when he saw that Harmon was waiting, he said out loud, ‘Oh, yes — he does that.’

  ‘I thought it migh
t just be Maths,’ said the other, ‘but it was just the same with the other paper. Call it “IQ” or “spatial” or whatever, it’s mainly designed to test the potential of the intellect. I found his answer to one of the questions especially interesting; not the answer itself, you understand, which was absolutely correct anyway, but the way he arrived at it. It concerned a triangle.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ Ah! Trig, Hannant thought, forking a piece of chicken into his mouth. / wondered how he’d do with that.

  ‘Of course, it could have been solved with simple trigonometry,’ (Harmon had almost read his mind,) ‘or even visually — it was that simple. Indeed it was the only simple question in the batch. Here, let me show you:’

  He pushed his plate aside, took out a pen and sketched on a paper napkin:

  ‘Where AD is half AC, and AE is half AB, how much greater is the larger triangle than the smaller?’ Hannant dotted the diagram so:

  and said: four times greater. Visual, as you said.’

  ‘Right. But Keogh simply wrote down the answer. No dotted lines, just the answer. I stopped him and asked: “How did you do that?” He shrugged and said: “A half times a half is a quarter — the smaller triangle is one quarter as great as the big one.’”

  Hannant smiled, shrugged. ‘That’s typical of Keogh,’ he said. ‘It’s what first attracted me to him. He ignores formulae, jumps gaps in the normal reasoning process, leaps from terminal to terminal.’

  Harmon’s expression hadn’t changed. It was a very serious expression. ‘What formulae?’ he asked. ‘Has he done Trig yet?’