The Plague-Bearer

by Brian Lumley

  B.J.’s eyes narrowed immediately, and she lowered her voice to enquire: “Oh, and is it this business with the murderer, mah wee man? But have ye forgotten what he is; how dangerous he is? No—” and she shook her head, “—it’s no a good idea tae be out on Auld Windy’s streets in the dark o’ the nicht, Harry.”

  “I know,” he answered, “but better that than being in here, worrying about your girls out there!”

  Then, as if his reply had flown right over B.J.’s head, she reached out to stroke his face, nodded and said, “Aye, and it’s been makin’ ye itch ever since we spoke o’ it at length, has it no?”

  “Of course it has,” Harry replied. “There’s a madman on the streets, a vampire, an indiscriminate murderer who doesn’t seem concerned that he leaves this…this bloody trail of evidence behind his kills and makes little or no effort to clean up after himself. He’s…he has to be crazy, B.J.! He’s a menace and a threat to all of us, especially to you and the girls! And knowing that he’s…” Harry paused again, “out of control—out of his mind—well, I can’t simply sit around twiddling my thumbs, doing nothing about it.”

  Twice in a mere handful of words the Necroscope had almost said: “He’s a plague-bearer, B.J.!” But he couldn’t; there was that in his mind which simply wouldn’t allow it. It contravened Darcy Clarke’s post-hypnotic precepts, insofar as he might then need to explain just exactly how he knew they were dealing with a diseased thing—which was because E-Branch had told him so—which in its turn was also because his old friends in that most secret of intelligence agencies had a legitimate interest and a huge down on all such creatures…indeed a mandate to destroy them. Which would of course include B.J. and her moon-children!

  But in any case Harry’s confusion had escaped B.J.’s notice. And sighing resignedly, she stroked his face again, dropped her Scottish accent and said, “Don’t for a moment think I don’t appreciate what you’re trying to do for us, Harry. But honestly, I worry about you just as much and perhaps more than you do about me and mine. I know that you’re a very strange—maybe I should say very different—sort of man, Harry Keogh; also a very capable one. Nevertheless you are just a man, and if anything were to happen to you…”

  “But it’s not going to,” said Harry, shaking his head as he sensed her post-hypnotic spell fading. Her heart hadn’t been in it this time, apparently. It was possible she was of two minds; maybe she realized her best bet would be to have him out there, her champion against the night’s unknown dangers. Well perhaps, but B.J. wasn’t about to confess to vulnerability—not even to herself. Nor was she quite ready to give in to him. Wherefore:

  “Harry, now listen—” and giving it a last try, she reached under the bar for a very special bottle, “—surely you know how much happier I’ll be if you’ll stay here, safe indoors with me? Now wouldn’t you rather do that: have a glass or two of my good wine, maybe—” she showed him the bottle, “—and stay here with me?”

  What, a glass of B.J.’s special wine? No way, not a hope in hell! Not tonight Bonnie Jean! One glass of that positively addictive stuff: The Necroscope knew he would be no good for anything, that he’d be lucky if he could make his way upstairs to bed unaided!

  And so, again shaking his head in denial, also to clear it of mental fluff, he focussed his eyes, stared at B.J. and said: “No, I don’t think so. I’ll need to have my wits about me, B.J., if I’m to be going out.”

  “But Harry, I really don’t think—”

  “But I do!” He cut her short. “Not right now, but later I will be going out.”

  At which, seeing the strength of his will, also his dedication—his love, perhaps?—she simply accepted it, nodded and said no more…

  Checking routes that he had already checked more than once, the Necroscope found a small measure of relief in keeping busy; but at the same time he realized the futility of his activity. Knowing or regarding with suspicion half-a-dozen locations where an attack might happen didn’t help him, couldn’t tell him at which of them—if any—it would definitely be, nor when exactly it might be. Moreover, there was a real and significant measure of danger in what he was doing, in this task for which he’d volunteered himself. For despite that he always took care when using the Möbius Continuum—even when doing so under cover of darkness—still he risked being seen either entering or departing from what was (except to Harry himself) a conjectural, mathematical dimension. And such a sighting would be bound to arouse a great deal of inconvenient curiosity.

  Also, and frustratingly, while as a means of conveyance the Continuum was swift, indeed instantaneous, still the Necroscope couldn’t be in two or more places simultaneously. And meanwhile something deep inside, which felt like something from outside—by now an almost familiar sense of dark and deepening imminence born perhaps of his keenly intuitive nature, but just as likely of simple commonsense—was telling him that he shouldn’t even try to cover every possible eventuality, because there was only one place where he would really need to be.

  And as the seconds ticked relentlessly by, becoming minutes and then hours, he began to realize where this futility he felt had its source, and where it was leading him: in the constantly growing conviction that the one place where he really had to be—and then at the right moment—was with the one person he was still most concerned about: namely young Kate.

  Safe at home, was she? Well, maybe. But alone at home, definitely. And in Harry’s head, louder by the minute, always that phlegmy, guttural voice whose sick laughter more than hinted of sobbing; that voice telling him—

  —That young one’s a real fighter…And she’ll need to be when I catch up with her tonight…Payback time for that kick in the balls she gave me.

  But apart from the telephoned threat, which could of course be an empty one, what other evidence was there that Kate was in harm’s way?

  Still hesitant, torn two ways, Harry pondered the question. Well she had been the victim of an attack, albeit a failed one, hadn’t she? Perhaps the diseased maniac knew that Kate would be home tonight and was counting on it. Perhaps he’d been watching her, studying her routines…and perhaps he still was.

  With regard to that last possibility or theory, that Kate’s routines were even now under close scrutiny, it dawned on Harry that he had at his disposal a means of positively confirming or invalidating the worrying notion—and without wasting any more time at that. And so Harry finally decided: that right or wrong he must for the moment concentrate his efforts on Kate, who remained the youngest and most vulnerable member of the pack…

  Now there were other things to decide; namely the where and the when of it.

  The where: Kate’s flat would be the obvious starting point, and Harry knew the coordinates. He went there—at least as far as a “place” in the Continuum which corresponded to the landing on the stairs outside Kate’s inner door—but as soon as he got there, which was at once, he simply floated in Möbius darkness, the utter darkness of a place before time, making no attempt to conjure a door or to exit from the Continuum at that location.

  It was proximity that mattered: the fact that Kate had been here. Not how frequently she had been here; only the last occasion that this spot had known her presence. For that was where, and when, Harry would make his connection with her without that she would ever suspect that he had been here. Because while the Necroscope could not be with Kate in real time, he nevertheless knew how to connect with something of her in Möbius time.

  “Time,” yes: That was the essence of his plan.

  For not so long ago (while yet it often felt like decades!) the occasion had arisen when Harry had plumbed past and future time in the search for his wife and son. And on one such occasion he’d seen the scarlet life-thread of a vampire crossing his son’s pure blue thread in the Möbius time-streams. Now he would use Möbius time again, this time to track Kate’s life-thread.

  But first he must find that life-thread.

  So when was Kate last here on this landing? Last
night most probably, on arriving home after paying her taxi fare and climbing the alley’s stone steps from the street to the outer door, and then the stairs to this landing. So that and then was where and when he must go: back to last night.

  And yet…Even now the thought of Möbius time-travel gave Harry pause. This first leg would not be problematic, he knew; for the past, even the recent past, was over and done with; it contained nothing worth fearing, for nothing could be changed. But as for the future…

  The future was ever a devious thing, and the last thing the Necroscope wanted to witness was his own blue life-thread suddenly extinguished, signifying his extinction and, by his reckoning, his premature membership in the Great Majority! While that would surely happen one day, because no one is immortal, he was naturally anxious to avoid a preview of that unfortunate inevitability. In short, he didn’t want to know when.

  But that was for the future while Harry’s immediate concern was in the past. His hesitation had lasted only a moment (which was no time at all in the Möbius Continuum) before he found and opened a past-time door. And there it was, the achingly brilliant past of humanity: a myriad blue life-threads receding, narrowing down and finally (or initially?) coming together, converging in the two-and-a-half-million years distant blue core which was mankind’s beginning.

  Though Harry had seen it often enough before, still his jaw fell open as he stared and stared…and listened! For despite the absolute quiet, the utter absence of sound, it was as if he heard something: an angelic chorus—an orchestrated, interminable Ahhhhhhhhhh! A mystical, massed sighing consisting of one continuous note that existed solely in the Necroscope’s imagination, sounding only in his unique mind—for he knew that time was as silent as the Continuum itself. Of course it was; for if all the sounds of the past were given voice here, that would be an unbearable tumult.

  One of the pure blue life-threads beyond the past-time door issued from Harry himself; it was the trail that he’d left, and continued to leave, in past time; and he compared it to the jet exhaust of an aircraft thrusting him into the future, where the invisible door in which he had anchored himself was in fact the present or more properly an interface between The Past and What Was Yet To Be. But Harry’s life-thread was just one of uncountable others.

  He leaned forward, glancing this way and that, up and down; until just beyond the door something more of the interface, the vast, ever-increasing canvas of past-time became visible—but never the entire width of the present, and no glimpse of course of the future. That was for later.

  “Later.”

  The word or thought spurred Harry on, for time was “narrowing down.” A malapropism, of course, because time like space is ever expanding. Putting that thought aside, Harry launched himself headlong through the past-time door and fought against the opposing current. Simultaneously, he watched his life-thread as it appeared to wind itself back into him, while also seeming to reel him back into the past! And moving in opposition to time’s flow, he held his wrist to the fore with the face of his wristwatch visible in the blue glare of his life-thread. And there a truly astonishing sight: the second hand blurring as it hurtled anticlockwise round the dial, the minutes in a crazy whirl, and the hours unwinding like so many seconds! Harry supposed it was possible that he too was somehow growing younger: a notion that had never occurred to him before. Since his memory appeared unaffected, however, and he didn’t intend to retreat too far into the past (and by no means permanently) he likewise supposed, or more properly hoped, that it would make no great difference.

  Whichever, Harry let time’s opposing thrust slow him down, which also served to slow the frantic activity of the hands on his watch. It had been almost eleven-thirty tomorrow night when he commenced this experiment; but now, in “no time at all” (yet another notion to set his senses spinning!) already it was midnight on the previous night. And he slowed himself more yet.

  Eleven-thirty…eleven…ten-thirty…and finally ten o’clock last night, when at last—

  —There she was! That pale pink life-thread which was young Kate, coming nearer and even seeming to encroach upon him where she came out through her door and onto the landing. He couldn’t see her in the flesh, only the pale pink life-thread of a moon-child—a creature by no means undead because she’d never been dead—but he could imagine her, picture her walking backwards down the stairs, not only on her own Earthly, three-dimensional plane but also in his Möbius time; which “for the moment” meant time in reverse, “naturally…?”

  But these were confusing thoughts which Harry must put out of mind, concentrate on what he was doing, and watch over Kate. Which meant that now too he must turn about face and let time’s onrushing tide carry him back toward the Now. Except that being almost a day in arrears, he must needs travel faster than time. And reversing his direction, he willed himself forward; for the Necroscope had long since learned that in the Möbius Continuum, where even the smallest electrical impulses of vacuous thoughts have weight, the force of will is a physical concept also.

  As Harry moved back toward the future his Continuum coordinates remained coincident with the landing outside Kate’s door; and this way he could be satisfied that she was indeed home…which she would be in just another moment.

  And right now (or then) here she came: Kate’s lupine life-thread once again swerving toward him as he pictured her climbing the stairs exactly as she had done last night, entering her flat, and locking the door behind her. But even though Kate had now drifted somewhat apart from him, still her thread was visible nearby as time propelled them back towards their Now.

  So that when the hands on Harry’s watch began to slow down again, released from their hurtling forward motion to resume an everyday pace, he knew he had returned to the interface: to the past-time door where his motion was held to a constant rate of one second per second. And without pause he carried on through the door into the Möbius Continuum’s “ordinary” plane of being and the Now.

  There in the absolute nothingness, floating in weightlessness, Harry paused to give thought to what he’d learned or achieved, if anything. Well he knew that for more than twenty-four hours since last night Kate had remained indoors; her pink life-thread was close by even now; it had swung only marginally here and there while she performed this or that task within her flat. Also, in all the time the Necroscope had spent in Kate’s vicinity, at no time had he been aware of any crimson life-thread or threads—the sure sign of a vampire or vampires—encroaching upon, coming close to, or lingering anywhere at all near Kate’s. In fact, and apart from the pale pink stain of her own essence, as far as Harry could tell the past-time lanes had been totally free of vampire influence, at least in her locality. Indeed, he had seen nothing whatever of crimson activity.

  And as for the time now…he glanced at the luminous dial of his watch: It was a minute or so prior to eleven-thirty p.m. He was back when he’d started out.

  Night time—indeed the middle of the night, almost—and Kate was apparently safe, alive and well, and so far completely unthreatened. Harry was naturally glad for her sake…and yet in a way he was also disappointed. For it was beginning to look like his instincts—subverted and sidetracked by that phlegmy, sobbing voice on the telephone—had on this occasion led him astray.

  But despite that the Necroscope felt flat and partly spent, with his previous sense of imminence and urgency fast dissipating, still he was determined to see it through: to follow the course he had set himself to its conclusion and see what would or probably would not now transpire.

  For which reason he sought out a future-time door…

  XI

  Just seven minutes away in time to come, and a little less than fifty yards from the ground floor entrance to Kate’s flat, Mike Milazzo made his way like an outsize garden snail up the canyon alley’s worn stone steps. Mike was aware that his trousers were damp at the waist and down the legs, where dribbles of the vile fluid that his body was leaking gathered or ran in slow streamlets; and
he knew his shoes were full of the stuff, which squelched and brimmed over as he walked or hobbled, leaving a silver snail-trail that shone in the light of a gradually waxing moon.

  Also, his gums had shrunk back, his teeth had loosened, and he constantly licked at the froth as it dried on his lips, spitting it out along with endless blobs of the thick yellow phlegm that flooded his mouth from some seemingly inexhaustible source. Worst of all, Mike could smell himself: the unmistakable stench of decay, of a body fast rotting alive!

  And yet, even though almost all hope was gone and the true death loomed ever closer, still Mike’s stubbornly human streak—plus the enhanced physical powers of an undead vampire—sustained him. And even in the delirium of onrushing devolution he imagined himself buoyed up, almost weightless; and despite that he limped up the alley, still he felt that he flowed! And his hatred of the Francezcis, of The Chemist in his Bulgarian laboratory, and most recently of Angus McGowan: all of this pent-up loathing floated uppermost in what remained of his disintegrating mind.

  Angus McGowan, yes, and his lying promises. Where was Angus now? Nowhere to be seen. And Mike’s awareness of the tiny vials in his pocket so keen and constant that it caused them to weigh like lead. Should he take them anyway? Take the contents of all three, regardless of the outcome? Was there still time? But how could any antidote possibly fight off the horror that had overcome him? And where was the one who was supposed to advise him?

  “McGowan, you rotten little bastard!” Mike hissed the words out through a fresh burst of froth. “You said you’d be here…argh! Argh!…but where the fuck are you?”

  That last was like an invocation.

  A dark shadow seemed to grow out of the brick wall’s deeper shadows directly in front of Mike, bringing him to a staggering halt. It was Angus McGowan, his eyes ablaze in the night, feral in their reflection of a stray moonbeam’s faint yellow gleam.