by Brian Lumley
There she lay, all mud and bones and weed, and to all intents and purposes, to everyone except Harry himself, it was as if she had never been, because there was nothing physical left of her to remind anyone. She was dead and departed, almost but not quite forgotten. But forgotten by the living, anyway.
For the living cannot know and wouldn’t care to be told, and if they were told they would want it proved, and even then they still wouldn’t believe … that death isn’t like that. It isn’t The Absolute End that most men in their hearts believe it to be, not entirely. The flesh dies, but the mind goes on; the Great Majority go on, in their fashion. Great thinkers continue to think their great thoughts, to be shared among their teeming dead colleagues. Great architects build fantastic cities of the mind which may only exist in their minds, for their voices have been silenced except to the Necroscope, Harry Keogh. Great mathematicians and astronomers continue to puzzle out the nature of a universe whose secrets they can never expose, except to those gone down with them into the earth. And to one other. Or maybe two others …
Thus, while on the surface the waters of the pool in that small bite of a bight might seem relatively calm—rippled by a mournful wind and awash with stars reflected on the darkly mobile mirror—and the night silent bar the wind itself—and the ether void of all evidence of life … underneath was less than calm, was indeed unquiet, where the dead conversed.
And maybe seventy-five yards up-river, set back from the water behind a high wall and a long, wild garden, and standing central between two sagging, derelict companions, an old house gloomed out across the ruffled ribbon. Upstairs, a pair of dim lights behind matching windows were like bleary close-set eyes: Harry Keogh’s bedroom, where the Necroscope had fallen asleep with the lights still burning, and now lay dreaming.
This time Harry dreamed in sounds, not pictures, and the voices in his pillow were quiet and secretive as whispers, and shielded so that he wouldn’t overhear them—or if he did, so that he would know he was only dreaming …
Mary, can we really afford to take that chance? Dare we do, or not do, as you advise? Surely you know how we ache from our inactivity ? Why, it’s been years that we’ve lain here doing nothing! But it’s Harry, Mary, Harry himself! And your son has done so very, very much for us. So why won’t you let us at least try to do something for him?
The dead voice was Sir Keenan Gormley’s; Harry would know it anywhere, any time. And yes, it had been years, three years at least, since he had been in London and talked to Sir Keenan. For there could be no mistaking the fact that the teeming dead were talking about him. And because his mother was close (and her voice, too, so very familiar), he could separate out these individual sources from the background “static” which he alone knew to be the murmur of a million voices, the private conversations of the Great Majority.
But this time that static was far less evident, and Harry knew why: across a vast swath of land—or under it—the dead in their graves weren’t talking but listening to this same conversation. And if for that and no other reason, he knew it must be very important to them. But he must listen carefully—like an eavesdropper, yes, despite that he was the subject of their conversation, or because he was—else they would sense him and close him out.
Do you think I don’t want to help, don’t want you to help? (His Ma’s voice brimmed with her frustration.) Can you think of anything I wouldn’t do for him? Can you name anything I haven’t done for him? Indeed not, for there’d been a time when she had even risen from the river for him.
But—
No buts, Keenan Gormley! I gave him life, remember? While it was you and yours who took it from him! For it was the work he did for you that killed him in the end.
Unfair, said another voice when Gormley failed to answer; and the Necroscope knew this one, too. It was his old physical training instructor, Graham “Sergeant” Lane, speaking from his grave in a Harden cemetery. Oh, Harry your son, Mary Keogh—but you only had him for a few short years. Me, I watched him grow up. I saw the grit in him, and I knew how special he was. He’s a fighter, that one! I know it, for I’ve had the privilege of fighting with and through him. We all know it, which is why we can’t bear to see him crash now.
And unfair in another sense, too, Sir Keenan at last put in. It’s true that his work with E-Branch got him in trouble. But he knew what he was getting into. And always remember, if Harry hadn’t learned what he did when he was with E-Branch—about the Möbius Continuum—then when he died he would have stayed dead! His metempsychosis wouldn’t have been possible. We wouldn’t be talking about him now but to him—and in our own medium, on our own level! He died, Mary, yes, but now he lives again. And we want to keep it that way.
Harry’s Ma let him finish, but she was still considering what Sergeant had said before him. Crash? (Her voice was even more a whisper.) How crash? Do you mean die, and join us here? What, and are we to ignore all the talented people we’ve listened to? And lifting her dead voice for everyone to hear: What of our precog, Keenan Gormly, who have told us that my son is to go on? And singling out Sergeant: How can you even think to presume to know my son better than I? We’re of one flesh. Why, even when he’s silent—when he shuts himself off from me—still I know what he’s thinking!
But we’ve all known something of that, Mary. (It was Gormley again, but gentler now, for he felt something of her fear).
No, (Harry sensed the incorporeal shake of his Ma’s head, and her faceless but unforgotten, indomitable smile), not like that at all. I mean … the feelings at the very core of him. I mean all the aches and hurts and moods of his heart. I know him like … like a mother? And who else could have put it better than that?
And we know him as the one shining light in our darkness, Sergeant was as rough as ever, but a rough diamond for all his bluntness. Which we aren’t about to see blown out! A babble of ready agreement went up from at least a dozen more dead voices that Harry hadn’t recognized as yet. Yes (Sergeant continued, cutting them off), our precogs tell us that Harry will go on. But it’s the future we’re talking about, and that’s an inexact science. Who can second-guess tomorrow? Who wants to risk it? So Harry is going to live, going to go on, is he? But who or what as? Himself … or something else?
Knowing the depth of Sergeant’s feelings—that he, too, had come to Harry’s rescue in the past, as all of them would if given the chance—Mary Keogh wasn’t overwhelmed or outraged by his passion; she merely tut-tutted, and quietly inquired of all the rest: So, what would you have me do? What would you do, if you were closest to him? What advice would you give him?
We would simply tell him the truth, Sir Keenan answered. And we would want to know why he hasn’t seen it for himself! I mean, we know he’s in trouble again; things have come into our world that are not human, things that were human but have suffered a change, things that “lived” between life and death. And even truly dead, still they are evil and the Great Majority of us hold them at bay, ostracised. The Necroscope … sent them here—but we can’t blame him for that. They’re a plague that had to be cut out of a world where our children and loved ones still live.
So, you’d tell him the truth, Harry’s Ma was patient. And how would you go about it? “Harry, we know there are still evil creatures in your world. We know, because you keep sending them to our world. So tell us: what is it that’s caused you to team up with one of them? And not just a vampire, Harry, but a shewolf—a werewolf—too!” Is that what you’d tell him?
Something like that, yes. But Sir Keenan was cautious.
Listen to me, all of you, she said then. My son is in as much danger from himself as he is from them. It’s been a long time since he spoke to me—or to any of us—but the last time he did he asked me if I thought he was going mad. He thought he might have a drink problem, not of his making but one passed on to him in his new body. He thought he might have inherited something of Alec Kyle’s talent, too. His dreams were insane, nightmares in the truest sense of the word. And ev
en awake, during a conversation with me, he saw strange visions; portent of things to come, I’m sure, but far beyond his understanding. And beyond mine—and in life I was a psychic in my own right! But because I was a psychic, and because he’s my son, I heard more than his spoken words. I understood more than he was trying to convey to me. And I knew that he didn’t know what was wrong with him. She paused to clear her thinking, see her way, and then continued:
So I spied on him, in his waking hours and sleeping hours alike, to see if I could discover what was wrong. And I discovered more than I had bargained for. This female Thing who holds him in her spell: she, this Bonnie Jean, has caused him to live in two different worlds, even different minds. In one of these, he knows what she is, and it horrifies him! But yet he is bound to her, in thrall to her—but no, thank God, not as a vampire thrall! Yet in his other mind he’s also enthralled, but … differently. Which any man who ever loved will understand. Complicated? Oh, but that isn’t the half of it. Don’t you see what’s become of him? He is, literally, a split-person if not a split-personality!
But even before B.J., his difficulties defied description. What, his mind in another man’s body? His wife and child, fled from him, gone off to a place where even he, where even we (and again I thank God, that they haven’t come among us!) can’t find them? In his search for them, my son has discovered vampires in his world—but he can’t admit it or do anything about it until B.J. lets him. She has … hypnotized him, absolutely! But more than that, I suspect there’s something else wrong with him that neither he nor I understand. Something that interferes with his talents, his use of the Möbius Continuum, even his willingness to talk … to talk to his own mother! Now tell me: don’t you think Harry has problems enough?
She fell silent, and for a while the Great Majority could feel her anguish like grief …
Then Keenan Gormley asked her: What’s your point, Mary?
My point? She repeated him. But isn’t that obvious? If my son is on the brink of madness, wouldn’t telling him the truth push him over? Would he accept the truth, or deny it? Would he accept his self-deception and try to put it right—or escape into the unreality of madness? Quite simply, how much can his mind take? It was heavily overburdened before, but now … ?
Which is why we can’t tell him, because we don’t know all the answers. But even though you don’t seem able to understand that, this B.J. knows it only too well. And she keeps him on a tight leash. She wants him sane, for her own purposes, and for herself! I hate it, hate to admit it, but she may well be his salvation. This … she-thing anchors him, and while she keeps him safe, she keeps him sane. For that reason we’ve got to let it be, for now at least …
All of them let her words sink in, until Sergeant clarified the situation with: You mean, we do nothing? From his tone of voice, the idea disgusted him.
But then another dead voice came to the force. Well, maybe not exac‘ly nothin’. And the dreaming Harry knew this one, too. It was R. L. Stevenson Jamieson, indebted to the Necroscope as a result of some work they’d done together down in London. R.L. Stevenson’s brother had been the lycanthrope (just a very sick person, not a werewolf) that Harry and his team had dealt with at the time he’d first met Bonnie Jean Mirlu. In the main, R.L. owed his acceptance by the Great Majority—the respect they gave both him and his name—to Harry, and he wasn’t about to forget it.
How do you mean, R.L.? Sir Keenan wanted to know. Is there some way we can help Harry, without jeopardizing his sanity?
Well I sure can! came the answer at once. See, I has obi. That’s obeah to you. It’s in my blood, come down to me from my Poppy. But here in this place I has no great use for it, excep’ to keep my brother Arthur Conan in check. Not that A. C. ’s much trouble, not any more. Now, I wants you to understand, my obi’s the gentle kind like Poppy’s before me: white magic, you’d call it. See, Poppy wouldn’t a harmed a soul. He was just happy with his charms and love potions, over in Haiti where I was brung up. He never once messed with poisons or dead folks … er, I means the zombies, beggin’ your pardon. My Poppy was more into protection, yeah! And in that line, well, he did have somethin’ more than the simple stuff.
Heck, he coulda used it to make himself a big man. Why, in Haiti whole governments has stood or fallen on stuff such as my Poppy’s obi! Yeah, for he had the power to look into a enemy’s mind and so know his every move. And me, I has it too, only not so strong now that I is dead. See, when a man don’t use his obi he loses it. It grows strong with practice, and shrinks without it. And down here among the dead folks, well I haven’t had much use for it. Not too many enemies, down here …
But I knows the Necroscope; we worked together to put some stuff right—I mean with my brother Arthur Conan. And I knows that if Harry coulda found a different way … (R.L. sighed, and the dead sensed his incorporeal shrug.) But there you go: A. C. couldn’t give a damn for anyone else’s life, so in the end his own was forfeit.
Anyway, I know Harry’s aura. So in a way I guess I’m somethin’ like his Ma. It’s not just that I hear him when he talks to us, but I also knows how he feels. I can feel for him, and I can feel out his enemies, too! Oh, I’m not one for gettin’ into their heads like A. C. could, but I knows when they’s around and how many they is and where they’s comin’ from. Stuff like that. I couldn’t—I wouldn’t—tell him who they is, but I could at least let him know that they’s there. So … what you think?
And Harry’s Ma said, Good! Yes! It’s a start. Down inside, Harry knows he’s in trouble, and R.L.’s obeah can emphasize the truth of it without being specific. After that it will be up to Harry to work it out for himself, step by step, stage by stage.
But Sir Keenan Gormley wanted to know: And is that all? We can’t do anything else?
Oh, we could probably do a lot, Mary answered. But slowly, and very carefully. For if it comes to it, well, eventually we may have to do an awful lot—I mean our very utmost.
And each and every one of the teeming dead, they knew what she meant …
But in a while, frustrated beyond measure, Sergeant—who was once a man of action—said, And meanwhile we’re even forbidden to advise him? I mean, there’s no other way to help him, except by leaving him alone?
Only if he asks for our advice, she answered, and only if he asks for our help. For that will be the first sure sign that he’s coming to terms with it and is ready to fight back. I remember when I was a girl, my mother used to tell me: “No one can help the man who won’t help himself.”I’ve lived by that maxim, and so has Harry—and he’ll go on doing it. There you have it. We daren’t show him the light but must wait till he sees it for himself.
And when he does … he’s going to be one mad Necroscope! (Sergeant’s incorporeal nod of agreement.) Not crazy, just mad as hell! So maybe you’re right and it’s for the best.
Oh, he’ll be a lot madder than hell, (Sir Keenan’s short, grim forecast). Hotter, too. And I fancy that will be his main problem, for that’s when he’ll need to be at his coolest. Then, when Harry Keogh is cool … well, just watch. You’ll see hell itself freeze right over … !
All talking done, their meeting concluded, they could go their own ways now, and withdraw to the only places they knew: their graves in the lonely earth, where they lay in their dust and decay and the endless night of death. But in that interminable darkness, a lonely candle flickering; one source of light and warmth, one heart still beating.
One Necroscope, tossing in his tumbled bed …
The telephone was ringing.
The voices of the dead receded, took on the form of “genuine” dreaming, metamorphosed into the periodic clamour of the phone.
Harry knew he should try to hang on to his dream, but was afraid to and so let it slide into limbo. Then the voices were gone and any significance to events in the Necroscope’s waking world gone with them. He woke up.
Br-rrring! Br-rrringgg!—nerve-janglingly. With which, the last ring echoed into silence. But the ans
wering machine had clicked on, and a red light glowed to indicate a message.
What? Who? Harry scrambled to reach for the monitor, and almost tumbled out of bed. His mind was fuzzy; he’d only been asleep for an hour or so, and he’d only gone to sleep to kill some time until B.J. called. If she called.
And now? This could be her! He grabbed the monitor—too late. The answering machine clicked off.
He sat up, breathed heavily, ran his fingers through his hair. Time? Just before ten. He’d been dreaming, and he’d wanted to remember his dreams … hadn’t he? And then the phone.
He played back the message:
“Harry, mah wee man. Call me back, will ye?” B.J.’s husky voice coming out of his answering machine had a weird effect on him:
On the one hand he shuddered as a mournful howling came echoing out of nowhere (in fact from the deepest vaults of his mind), while a wolf’s head in silhouette angled itself sharply against a full and shining moon, its throat throbbing with its song. And on the other he recognized and was helpless to fight against his dependency, his desire for B.J., and the fact that he hadn’t seen her for over a week now.
Then the howling was gone into limbo (along with a dream he knew he should remember) and all that remained was the fact that B.J. had called and he’d missed it. As indeed he’d missed B.J. herself for the last six or seven days. Too long by far.
He blinked his eyes, rubbed at them, forced himself more fully awake. Which wasn’t easy. His mind was buzzing with half-memories, dreams and fancies—and fantasies? Almost as if he hadn’t woken up at all. Or wished he hadn’t.
Six or seven days …
Well, the last couple of days without her were only to be expected; it was her time, when she would—or should—have been up in the Highlands doing her own thing, hunting and living off the land. What, even in this weather? … But the Necroscope didn’t even give that a second thought. It was one of the many things he wasn’t allowed to question, something that might from time to time register, until his mind made an automatic compensation. For until she said otherwise, B.J. was “an innocent.” And even then—despite that in a hidden place inside he knew something of who and what she really was—still Harry was in thrall to her, beguiled by her, in love with her.
