by Brian Lumley
‘Yes, Borowitz told me that,’ Dragosani answered dryly. ‘But we know about spotters, Shukshin, so stop stalling and get on with it.’
‘I wasn’t stalling. I was trying to explain about the man I’m going to kill — today!’
Dragosani and Batu exchanged glances. Batu looked down on the top of Shukshin’s head and said: ‘You were going to kill a British ESPer? Why? And who is he?’
‘It was my way of getting back into Borowitz’s good books,’ Shukshin lied. ‘The man’s name is Harry Keogh. He is my stepson. He got his talent — whatever it is — from his mother. Sixteen years ago I killed her, too…’ Shukshin continued to glare at Dragosani. ‘She fascinated me — and she infuriated me! Is she the one you meant when you said I was “probably” a murderer? No “probably” about it. Oh, I killed her all right. Like all ESPers, she hurt me. Her talent drove me mad!’
‘Never mind her,’ snapped Dragosani. ‘What about this Keogh?’
That’s what I was trying to tell you. With you two, powerful as you are, still I had to actually enter the house to know you were here. But with Harry Keogh — ‘
‘Yes?’
Shukshin shook his head. ‘He’s different. His talent is…vast! I know it is. You see, the bigger it is, the more it hurts. So I’m not only killing him for Borowitz but also for myself.’
Dragosani was interested. He could always finish this thing with Shukshin later; but if Harry Keogh was that powerful, he would like to know more about him. And in any case, if he was a member of the British E-Branch it would be like killing two birds with one stone. As his interest expanded he forgot to ask Shukshin the important question: was Keogh a member of the British E-Branch? And that was something the other wasn’t going to volunteer.
‘I think we might be able to accommodate you,’ Dragosani finally said. ‘It’s always good when you can reach an understanding with old friends.’ He put away his gun. ‘When, exactly, were you going to kill this man, and how?’
And Shukshin told him.
After Shukshin had gone back to the house, Harry returned to his car and drove it to the foot of the hill in the direction of Bonnyrigg. Down there he parked again, off the road, then made his way on foot across a field to the river. Frozen over, the area was unfamiliar and made more so by the first feathers of snow where they drifted down from the leaden skies. Everything began to take on the soft, misty aspect of a winter painting.
Harry began to make his way upriver. His mother’s resting place was up there somewhere, he couldn’t say where exactly. That was one of the reasons he’d come
again to this place: to make sure he knew exactly where she was, that he could find her under any and all circumstances. Walking on the frozen water, he reached out his mind:
‘Ma, can you hear me?’
She was there immediately. ‘Harry, is that you? So close!’ And at once her apprehension, her agony of fear for him: ‘Harry! Is it… now?’
‘It’s now, Ma. But don’t give me any more problems than I have already. I need your help, not arguments. I don’t need anything to trouble my mind.’
‘Oh, Harry, Harry! What can I say to you? How am I supposed to stop worrying about you? I’m your mother…’
‘Then help me. Don’t say anything, just be still. I want to see if I can find you, blind.’
‘Blind? I don’t — ‘
‘Ma, please!’
She was silent, but her worry gnawed at him, in his head, like the pacing of a troubled loved one in a small room. He kept walking, closed his eyes and went to her. A hundred yards, maybe a little more, and he knew he was there. He stopped walking, opened his eyes. He stood in the curve of the overhanging bank, on the thick white ice which formed his mother’s headstone. Her marker, and his marker, too. Now he knew he could always find her.
‘I’m here, Ma.’ He crouched down on the ice, scuffed away a thin layer of snow, looked at the heavy jack-handle in his gloved hand. That was the second reason he had come.
As he began to batter at the ice, she said: ‘I see it all now, Harry. You’ve been lying to me, deceiving me,’ she reproached him. ‘You think there will be problems after all.’
‘No I don’t, Ma. I’m much stronger now, in many ? ways. But if there is a problem… well, I’d be a fool not to cover all the possibilities.’
Here, close to the bank, the ice was a little thicker. Harry began to perspire, but soon he’d made a hole almost three feet across. He cleared as much as he could of the broken ice fragments from the hole and straightened up. Down there, the water swirled blackly. And under the water, under the cold silt and mud…
All done, now Harry must go, and quickly. No good to let his sweat grow cold on him. Also, it was beginning to snow a little heavier. It began to get dark as the early winter dusk came with the snow. He had time now for a brandy at the hotel, and then, then it would be time for his showdown with Viktor Shukshin.
‘Harry,’ his mother called after him one last time as he hurried back across the field to his car. ‘Harry, I love you! Good luck, son…’
One hour later Dragosani and Batu stood behind a clump of young conifers on the river bank twenty-five or thirty yards upstream of Shukshin’s house. They had been there for a little less than half an hour but already were beginning to feel the cold biting through their clothing. Batu had commenced a rhythmic swinging of his arms across his chest and Dragosani had just lit a cigarette when at last the yellow light above the door to Shukshin’s courtyard snapped into life — his signal to them that the scene was now set for murder — and two figures came out into the evening.
In real time it was not yet night, but the winter darkness was almost that of night and but for the stars and a rising moon, visibility would be poor. The clouds, so dense only an hour ago, had now drifted away and no more snow had fallen; but to the east the sky was black with a heavy burden and what little wind there was came front that direction. It would yet snow tonight, and heavily. But for the moment the stars lit the scene with their cold, soft light and the rising moon made a silver ribbon of the winding river of ice.
As the figures from the house picked their way down to the river Dragosani took a last drag on his cigarette behind cupped hands, threw it down and ground it out beneath his heel; Batu stopped swinging his arms; they both stood like stone and watched the play unfold.
At the river’s rim the two figures shrugged out of their overcoats and placed them on the bank, then adopted kneeling positions as they put on their skates. There was a little conversation, but it was low and the wind was in the wrong direction. Only snatches of talk drifted back to the hidden watchers. Shukshin’s voice, dark and very deep, sounded openly aggressive to Dragosani and wolfish — like the growling of a great dog — and he wondered why Keogh didn’t take fright or at least show something of suspicion; but no, the younger man’s voice was flat and even, almost carefree, as the two glided out on to the ice and began to skate.
At first they went to and fro, almost side by side, but then the slighter figure took the lead. And moving with some skill he rapidly picked up speed to come skimming upriver towards the spot where the watchers were hiding. Dragosani and Batu crouched down a little then, but at the last moment before he drew level with them Keogh turned in a wide loop which took in the entire breadth of the river and headed back the other way.
Behind him, Shukshin had almost slowed to a halt as Keogh made his run. The older man was far less certain on the ice, seemed awkward and even clumsy by comparison; but as Keogh sped back towards him he now turned to skate in the same direction, but in such a way as to impede the faster man. Keogh leaned over in a slalom at such an angle that his skates threw up a sheet of snow and ice as he missed the other by inches, then threw himself over the other way at a similar angle to bring himself back on course. And a scant twelve inches away, his skates carved ice on the very rim of the sabotaged circle where fresh-formed ice barely held the central disc in place.
And Shukshin was so clos
e on his heels that he, too, must swerve wildly, his arms windmilling, to avoid his own trap! ‘Careful, Stepfather!’ Keogh called back over his shoulder as he sped away. ‘I almost collided with you then.’
Dragosani and Batu heard. Batu said: ‘A fortunate young man, this one — so far.’
‘Oh?’ Dragosani wasn’t so sure fortune had anything to do with it. Shukshin had been unable to specify Keogh’s talent: what if he was a telepath? He would have the power to pluck his stepfather’s treacherous thoughts right out of his head. ‘Myself, I think our blackmailer will find this more difficult than he thought.’
Shukshin had come to a halt now, standing still on the ice in a peculiar hunched stance and watching Keogh intently where he continued to skate. The Russian’s shoulders and chest rose and fell spasmodically and his body visibly shook, as if he were in pain or suffering from great emotional stress. ‘This way, Harry,’ he called harshly. ‘This way! You’re too good for me, I’m afraid. Why, you could skate circles around me!’
Keogh came back, circled the other’s hunched figure, and again. And with each sweep his skates went inches closer to disaster. Shukshin held out his arms and Keogh took his hands, spinning round the older man and turning him on his own axis.
‘And now,’ Max Batu whispered to Dragosani where they looked on, ‘The coup de grace!’
Suddenly Shukshin stopped turning and appeared to stumble into Keogh. Keogh twisted his body to avoid him. Their hands were still locked. One of Keogh’s skates dug in where it cut through a skim of powdery snow and into the groove of the channel hacked by Shukshin. He was jerked to a halt and only Shukshin’s grip on his wrists kept him from falling on to the infirm disc of ice.
Shukshin laughed then, a crazed, baying laugh, and thrust Keogh away from him — thrust him towards death!
But Keogh held tight to the sleeves of Shukshin’s coat and as he was pushed so he pulled. Caught off balance Shukshin jerked forward; Keogh bent to one side and threw him over his hip — but when he released Shukshin, still the Russian held fast to him! With a cry of outrage the older man fell inside his own circle, dragging Keogh after him.
Both of them crashed down in a tangle on ice which at once shifted beneath them. The circle made cracking sounds at its rim, like small gunshots; water spouted up in black jets as the disc tilted and broke in two halves; Shukshin gave a cry of horror — a strange, mad cry like a wounded beast — as the semicircle of ice supporting him and Keogh stood on end and tipped them into the freezing, gurgling water.
‘Quick, Max!’ Dragosani snapped. ‘We can’t afford to lose both of them.’ He charged from behind the cover of the conifers with Batu close on his heels.
‘Who would you prefer to save?’ the Mongol rasped as they jumped down onto the ice.
‘Keogh,’ he answered at once, ‘if it’s possible. He’ll know more about the British organisation than Shukshin. And he has this talent of his — whatever it is.’
Even as he spoke those words a fantastic idea had come to Dragosani, one he had never even considered before. If he could ‘learn’ necromancy from an undead
Thing and with it steal the thoughts and secrets of the dead, mightn’t he also steal their talents? At the Chateau Bronnitsy the agents were all allies, working on the same side, towards the same end. But here in England the ESPers were enemies! Why not steal Keogh’s as yet unknown talent itself — and use it to his own ends?
From the hole in the river where cakes of ice churned in dark, frenzied water, a great grunting and gasping sounded as Batu and Dragosani drew closer; but as they more cautiously approached the rim itself all sounds ceased and they were greeted only by the gurgle and slap of water moving under and against ice. For a moment a clutching hand shot dripping into view and clawed at the rim, but before they could make a move to grab it the hand was gone, sucked under.
‘This way!’ Dragosani gasped. ‘Follow the course of the river.’
‘You think there’s a chance?’ Batu obviously thought not.
‘A very slim one,’ said Dragosani.
They ran on the ice as best they could under a cold and silent moon.
Beneath the ice, tumbled and turned by the current, Harry Keogh somehow got his jacket off and let it go. Under his shirt he wore a rubber wet-suit vest, but still the cold was terrific. It must surely finish Shukshin, who was completely unprotected.
Harry started to swim, kept his head turned sideways with his face against the ice, actually found places where cold air was trapped in shallow pockets. He swam towards his mother, following her stream of troubled thoughts just as he had followed them unerringly two hours ago
with his eyes closed. Except then there had been plenty of air to breathe and he had been warm.
Panic gripped him momentarily but he put it out of mind. His Ma was over there — that way! He began to swim more strongly — and something grasped at his feet, his legs. Something fastened its grasp on him and clung to his trousers. Shukshin! The river was bobbing them along in tandem, like matches down a drain, gluing them together through sheer gravitational attraction.
Harry swam more desperately yet, with his arms, with one leg. He swam as never before, his lungs bursting, his heart a great gong clanging away in his chest. And Shukshin clawing his way up his body, his hands like the pincers of some great crab, snatching at Harry as if to pull him to pieces.
This was it; he could swim no more; the water was the black blood of some giant alien into whose veins Harry had been injected, where Shukshin was an alien antibody bent on his destruction.
‘Ma! Ma! Help me!’ Harry cried out with his mind as at last he was forced to draw breath, but drew only icy water which gushed into his straining jaws and nostrils.
‘Harry!’ she answered at once, loudly, close at hand, her own voice frantic in his head. ‘Harry, you’re here!’
He kicked backwards, lashed out with both feet at Shukshin, and thrust upward with his back and head, crashing himself against the ice cover — which immediately, mercifully, shattered into thin shards as his head and shoulders emerged into air!
And suddenly the water was still and his feet touched a muddy bottom five feet down, and even before his eyes had focused and his battered senses stopped spinning, Harry knew he had made it. Now he summoned his last reserves, threw out his hands and grasped at tough roots where they projected from the overhanging bank. And slowly he began to draw himself up and out.
Beside him the water swirled and gurgled as from some hidden commotion. Harry half-turned and terror drew his lips back from his teeth — as Shukshin’s mad face came surging up alongside him, choking and gagging! The madman saw him, spewed water and a babbling scream of rage into his face, clutched at his throat with hands like steel grapples.
Harry brought his knee up into the maniac’s groin. Bones broke but still Shukshin hung on. He dragged Harry inexorably back, slavered into his face. For a long moment Harry thought he meant to bite him, savage him like a rabid dog! He fought Shukshin, slammed his clenched fists again and again into his ghastly face, to no avail. The madman would win. Harry was about to go under…
He reached out again for the tough roots in the river bank, but Shukshin’s hands at his throat were shutting off the air, shutting off life itself.
‘Ma!’ Harry silently cried. ‘You were right, Ma. I should have listened. I’m sorry.’
‘No!’ came her denial of defeat. ‘No!’ Shukshin had killed her, but he must not be allowed to kill her son.
And again the bitter water gurgled and churned — but more blackly yet!
Dragosani skidded to a halt not fifteen feet away, grabbed at Batu and drew him also to a standstill. Panting, their breath forming fragile feathers of snow in the air, they looked — they saw — and their jaws fell open. Two men had gone down under the ice back there, had been washed downstream to this hole, and until a moment ago two figures had fought and torn at each other here in the still water beneath the river bank. But now there were three figure
s there in the water, and the third one was as terrible a thing as ever Dragosani had heard of or imagined or seen in his blackest nightmares!
It was… not alive, and yet it had the mobility of life, the authority of life. And it had purpose. It clung to Shukshin, wrapped itself about him, put its mud-and-bones arms around him and its algae and plastered-hair skull against his. Of eyes there were none, but a putrid glow shone out from empty sockets with a semblance of sight. And where before Shukshin had only howled and gibbered and laughed like a madman, now he quite literally went mad.
Shriek after shriek pealed out from him as he fought with the awful thing, the shrillest lunatic screeching that Dragosani and Batu had ever thought to hear; and at the very end, just before the horror dragged him under, words which at last the petrified watchers could understand:
‘Not you!’ Shukshin babbled. ‘Oh God, oh no, not you!’
Then he was gone, and the thing of bones and mud and weeds and death with him…
And Harry Keogh was left to scramble out on to the river bank.
Batu might perhaps have gone blindly, numbly after him but Dragosani still clutched at his arm. He clutched it, almost for support. Batu began to adopt his killing crouch but Dragosani stopped that, too. ‘No, Max,’ he hoarsely whispered, ‘we don’t dare. We’ve seen something of what he can do, but what other talents does he possess?’
Batu understood, relaxed, drew himself upright. On the bank above them Harry Keogh became aware of their presence for the first time. He turned his face towards them, found them, stared at them. His eyes focused on them at last and he looked as though he might speak, but he said nothing. For long moments they simply stared at
each other, all three, and then Keogh glanced back at the jagged patch of black water. ‘Thanks, Ma,’ he said, simply.
Dragosani and Batu watched as he turned, staggered, stumbled and then began to run weavingly back towards Shukshin’s house. They watched him go, and made no attempt to follow. Not yet. When he was out of sight Batu hissed:
