by Brian Lumley
‘Or else?’
Gormley shook his head. ‘That doesn’t even come into it-not yet.’
Harry gave a sour smile. ‘So we’re to be “friends”, are we?’
Gormley drew up a chair and sat down facing him. ‘Harry, no one else is going to know about you. That’s a promise. And yes, we are going to be friends. That’s because we need each other, and because we in turn are needed. Okay, you probably think you don’t need me, that I’m the last thing you need! But that’s only for now. You will need me, I assure you.’
Harry looked at him through narrowed eyes. ‘And just why do you need me? I think, before I tell you anything — before I even admit anything — that there are one or two things you’d better tell me.’
Gormley had expected nothing less. He nodded, stared straight into the other’s wary, questioning eyes, drew a deep breath. ‘Fair enough, I will. You know who I am, so now I’ll tell you what I am and what I do for a living. More importantly, I’ll tell you about the people I work with.’
He did. He told Harry about the British E-Branch, and what little he knew about the American, French, Russian and Chinese equivalents. He told him about telepaths who could speak to each other across the world without a telephone, with their minds alone; about precognition, the ability to pierce the future and tell of events yet to happen; about telekinesis and psychokinesis, and men who could move solid objects with their will alone and without resorting to simple physical strength. He spoke about ‘far-seeing’, and about a man he knew who could tell you what was happening anywhere in the world at
this precise moment of time; about psychic healing and a ‘doctor’ who could conjure the supreme power of Life into his naked hands, banishing diseases without the benefit of any form of conventional treatment; about the entire range of ESPers under his command, and how there was a place there, too, for Harry. And he told it all in such a way — with such understanding and clarity and sheer conviction — that Harry knew he spoke the truth.
‘So you see,’ Gormley finally came to a close, ‘you’re not a freak, Harry. Your talent may well be unique but you, as an ESPer, are not. Your grandmother was one before you and passed it down to your mother. She in turn passed a large dose of it down to you. God only knows what your children will be capable of, Harry Keogh!’
After a long while and as all he had been told sank in, Harry said: ‘And now you want me to work for you?’
‘In a nutshell, yes.’
‘What if I refuse?’
‘Harry, I found you. I’m a spotter; I have no real ESP talent myself but I can spot an ESPer a mile away. I suppose that in itself is a talent, but that’s all I have. The one thing I know for sure is that there are others like me. One of them is the boss of the Russian branch. Now I’ve come to you and put my cards on the table. I’ve told you things I didn’t even have the right to tell you. That’s because I want you to trust me, and also because I think I can trust you. You’ve nothing to fear from me, Harry — but I can’t promise the same for the other side!’
‘You mean… they might find me too?’
They get cleverer all the time, Harry,’ Gormley shrugged, ‘just as we do. They have at least one man in England. I’ve not met him, but I’ve sensed him close to me. I know he was looking at me, watching me. He’s probably a spotter, too. What I’m saying is this: I found you, so how long before they do? The difference is this: with them you’ll not get a choice.’
‘And with you I have a choice, right?’
‘Of course you do. It’s entirely in your hands. You join us or you don’t join us. That’s your choice. So take your time, Harry, and think about it. But not for too long. Like I said, we need you. The sooner the better…’
Harry thought about Viktor Shukshin. He couldn’t know it, but Shukshin was the man Gormley had ‘sensed’ watching him. ‘There are things I have to do first,’ he said, ‘before making any final decision.’
‘Of course, I can understand that.’
‘It may take some time. Maybe five months?’
Gormley nodded. ‘If it has to be.’
‘I think it has to be, yes.’ For the first time Harry smiled his natural, shy smile. ‘Hey, I’m dry! Would you like a coffee?’
‘Very much,’ Gormley smiled back. ‘And while we drink it, maybe you’d like to tell me about yourself, eh?’
Harry felt a great weight lifted from his shoulders. ‘Yes,’ he sighed. ‘I think maybe I would.’
It was a fortnight later that Harry Keogh finished his novel and ‘went into training’ for Viktor Shukshin. An advance on the book gave him the financial stability he would need for the next five or six months, until the job was done.
His first step was to join a group of crazy, all-weather swimming enthusiasts who made a habit of bathing in the North Sea at least twice a week all the year round — including Christmas and New Year’s Day! They had something of a reputation for breaking the ice on Harden’s reservoir to do charity plunges for the British Heart Foundation. Brenda, a level-headed girl on any other subject except Harry himself, thought he was crazy, of course.
‘It’s fine in the summer, Harry,’ he remembered her telling him one late August evening as they had lain naked in each other’s arms in his flat, ‘but what about when it starts to get cold? I can’t see you breaking the ice to go for a swim! What is this swimming craze, anyway?’
‘It’s just a way of staying fit and healthy,’ he had told her, kissing her breasts. ‘Don’t you like me healthy?’
‘Sometimes/ she had answered, turning more fully towards him as he grew hard again in her hand, ‘I think you’re far too healthy!’
In fact she had been happier than at any time in more than three years. Harry was much more open now, less given to brooding, more lively and exciting. Nor was his sudden interest in sports confined to swimming. He’d also taken up self-defence and joined a small Hartlepool Judo club. After only a week his coach there had been calling him a ‘natural’ and telling him he expected big things of him. He hadn’t known, of course, that Harry had another coach — a man who had once been the Judo champion of his regiment, who now had nothing better to do than pass on all his expertise to Harry.
But as for Harry’s swimming:
He’d always considered himself a fair swimmer; now it appeared that was all he had been. At first the rest of the group were way in front of him — at least until he found himself an ex-Olympic silver medallist who had died in an automobile accident in 1960, a fact recorded on his headstone in Stockton’s St Mary’s graveyard. Harry was enthusiastically received (his plan with reservations) and his new friend joined in the fun and games with great aplomb.
Even with this sort of advantage, however, there was still the physical side to overcome. Harry might let the professional swimmer’s mind guide his technique, but it couldn’t help with his lack of muscle; only practice could do that. Nevertheless his progress was rapid.
By September the craze was underwater swimming: that is, seeing just how long he could stay underwater on one breath, and how far he could swim before surfacing. The first time he did two complete lengths of the pool submerged was a red-letter day for Harry; everyone in the place had stopped swimming to watch him. That was at the swimming baths at Seaton Carew, where afterwards an attendant had sidled up to ask him his secret. Harry had shrugged and answered:
‘It’s all in the mind. Willpower, I suppose…’ Which was fair enough. What he did not say was that while it had certainly been his willpower, it had not entirely been his mind.
By the end of October Harry had let his Judo training fall off a little. His progress had been too rapid and his instructors at the club were growing wary of him. Anyway, he was satisfied that he could now look after himself perfectly well, even without ‘Sergeant’ Graham Lane’s assistance. By that time, too, he had taken up ice skating, the final discipline in his itinerary.
Brenda, herself quite capable on the ice, was astonished. She had often tried
to get Harry to accompany her to the ice rink in Durham, but he had always refused. That was hardly unnatural; she knew something of how his mother had died; it was just that she believed he should face up to his fear. She couldn’t know that the fear wasn’t entirely his but his mother’s. In the end, though, Mary Keogh was made to see the sense in Harry’s preparations and at last came gladly to his aid.
At first she was frightened — the ice, the memory, the sheer horror of her death lingered still — but in a very little while she was enjoying her skating again as much as
ever she had in life. She enjoyed through Harry, and in his turn he received the benefit of her instruction; so that soon he was able to lead Brenda a merry dance across the ice — much to her amazement!
‘One thing I can definitely say about you, Harry Keogh,’ she had breathlessly told him as he expertly waltzed her round and round the rink while their breath plumed fantastically in the cold air, ‘is that there’s never a dull moment! Why, you’re an athlete!’
And at that moment it had dawned on Harry that he really could be — if there weren’t other matters more pressing.
But then, in the first week in November as winter crept in, his mother had dropped something of a bombshell…
Harry was feeling better than he had ever felt in his life before, capable of taking on the entire world, the night she had come to him in his dreams. In his waking hours he must always contact her if he wished to speak to her, but when he slept it was different. Then she had instant access. Normally she respected his privacy, but on this occasion there was something she must talk over with him, something which could not wait.
‘Harry?’ she’d stolen into his dream, walking with him through a misty graveyard of great, looming tombstones standing as high as houses. ‘Harry, can we talk? Do you mind?’
‘No, Ma, I don’t mind,’ he’d answered. ‘What is it?’
She took his arm, held it tightly, and knowing now that she had firmly established rapport let her fears and her urgency spill out of her in a veritable torrent of words:
‘Harry, I’ve been speaking to the others. They’ve told me there’s terrible danger for you. Danger in Shukshin, and if you should destroy him terrible danger beyond him! Oh, Harry, Harry — I’m so dreadfully worried for you!’
‘Danger in my stepfather?’ he held her close, tried to comfort her. ‘Of course there is. We’ve always known that. But danger beyond him? What “others” have you been talking to, Ma? I don’t understand.’
She drew back from him to arm’s length, grew angry with him in a moment. ‘Yes, you do understand!’ she accused. ‘Or would if you wanted to. Where do you think you got your talent in the first place, Harry Keogh, if not from me? I was talking to the dead long before you came along! Oh, not as well as you do it, no, but well enough. All I ever managed were vague impressions, echoes, memories that lingered over — while you actually talk to them, learn from them, invite them into yourself. But things are different now. I’ve had fifteen years to practise my art, Harry, and I’m much better at it now than when I was alive. I had to practise it, you see, for your sake. How else was I going to be able to watch over you?’
He drew her close again and wrapped his arms about her, staring deep into her anxious eyes. ‘Don’t fight with me, Ma, there’s no need. But tell me now, what others are you talking about?’
‘Others like myself, people who were mediums in life. Some, like me, are dead only recently in the scale of time, but others have been lying in the earth a very long time indeed. In the old days they were called witches and wizards — and sometimes they were called worse than that. Many of them died for it. These are the ones I’ve been speaking to…’
Even dreaming Harry found the idea chilling: dead people talking to other dead people, communicating between their graves, considering events in a waking, living world from which they themselves had departed for ever. He shuddered a little and hoped she didn’t notice. ‘And what have they been telling you, these others?’
They know you, Harry,’ she answered. ‘At least, they
know of you. You’re the one who befriends the dead. Through you, the dead have a future — some of us, anyway. Through you, there’s a chance some of us can finish the things we never finished in life. They look to you as a hero, Harry, and they too worry for you. Without you there’s nothing left for their hopes, you see? They… they beg you to give up this obsession, this vendetta.’
Harry’s mouth hardened. ‘You mean Shukshin? I can’t do that. He put you where you are, Ma.’
‘Harry, it’s not… not so bad here. I’m not lonely any more, not now.’
He shook his head and sighed. ‘That won’t work, Ma. You’re only saying that for my sake. It only makes me love and miss you more. Life’s a gift and Shukshin stole it from you. Look, I know it’s not a good thing I’m doing — but neither is it unjust. After this it will be different. I have plans. You did give me a talent, yes, and when this is finished I’ll use it well. That’s a promise.’
‘But this thing with Viktor comes first?’
‘It has to.’
‘That’s your last word?’
‘Yes.’
She nodded sadly, freed herself and stepped away from him. ‘I told them that would be your answer. All right, Harry, I won’t argue it any further. I’ll just go now and let you do what you must. But you should know this: there will be warnings, two of them, and they won’t be pleasant. One comes from the others, and you’ll find it here in this dream. The other waits in the waking world. Two warnings, Harry, and if you fail to heed them… it will be on your own head.’
She began to drift away from him, between the towering headstones, the mist lapping at her ankles, her calves. He tried to follow her but couldn’t: invisible dream-stuff
stood between; his feet seemed welded to the gravel chips forming the graveyard’s paths.
‘Warnings? What sort of warnings?’
‘Follow that path,’ she pointed, ‘and you’ll find one of them there. The other will come from someone you’d do well to trust. Both are indications of your future.’
‘The future’s uncertain, Ma!’ he called after her mist-wreathed ghost. ‘No one sees it clearly! No one knows for sure!’
Then call it your probable future,’ she answered. ‘Yours, and also the futures of two others. Someone you love, and someone who asked for your help…’
Harry wasn’t sure he’d heard right. ‘What?’ he yelled at the top of his voice. ‘What’s that, Ma?’
But her voice and figure and mind had already merged with the swirling mist of the dream and she was gone.
Harry looked the way she had pointed.
The headstones marched like giant dominoes, towering markers whose tops were lost in billowing clouds of fog. They were ominous, brooding, and so was the path between them which Harry’s mother had pointed out to him. As for her ‘warnings’: maybe it was better if he didn’t know. Maybe he shouldn’t walk that way at all. But he didn’t have to walk: his dream was taking him that way anyway!
Harry drifted unresisting along the gravel path between ranks of mighty tombstones, drawn by some dream-force which he knew could not be denied. At the end of the avenue of markers there was an empty space where the mist alone swirled and eddied, a cold and lonely place, and beyond that -
Three more markers, but somehow more ominous than all the others put together. Harry drifted across the empty space straight towards them, and as he approached them
where they towered up out of the earth, so the dream-force gently set him down and gave him back his volition. He looked at the headstones and the mist which half-obscured them slowly lifted. And Harry read the warning his mother’s ‘others’ had left for him carved in deep, geometrically rigid characters in their surfaces. The first stone said: BRENDA COWELL
BORN 1958
SOON TO DIE IN CHILDBIRTH SHE LOVED AND WAS LOVED GREATLY
The second one said: SIR KEENAN GORMLEY
&
nbsp; BORN 1915
SOON TO DIE IN AGONY FIRST AND FOREMOST A PATRIOT
And the third one said: HARRY KEOGH
BORN 1957 THE DEAD SHALL MOURN HIM
Harry opened his mouth and shouted his denial: No!’
He stumbled back from the looming markers, tripped, threw wide his arms to break his fall -
— And knocked over a tiny bedside table. For a long moment he lay there, shocked from sleep, his heart hammering against his ribs, then gave a second great start as his telephone rang!
It was Keenan Gormley. Harry flopped shivering into a chair with the phone to his ear. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘You’.
‘Am I that much of a disappointment, Harry?’ the other asked, but with no trace of humour in his voice.
‘No, but I was sleeping. You sort of shocked me awake.’
‘Oh, well I’m sorry for that. But time is passing us by, and-‘
‘Yes,’ said Harry, on impulse.
‘Eh?’ Gormley sounded surprised. ‘Did you say yes?’
‘I mean: yes I’ll join you. At least, I’ll come to see you. We’ll talk some more about it.’ Harry had been considering Gormley’s proposition for some time, just as he had promised he would; but in fact it was his dream, which of course had been more than just a dream, that finally decided him. His mother had told him there was someone he’d do well to trust, someone who had asked for his help. Who could that be but Gormley? Until now his joining Gormley’s ESPers had been fifty-fifty, he might and he might not. But now, if there was any way he could change what Mary Keogh had called his ‘probable’ future, his and Brenda’s and Gormley’s, then -
‘But that’s wonderful, Harry!’ Gormley’s excitement was obvious. ‘When will you come down? There are so many people you must meet. We’ve so much to show you — and so much to do!’
