by Brian Lumley
The man had to be some kind of living ghost; he came and went and left no tracks. Steel doors, labyrinthine tunnel systems, and combination locks couldn’t stop him, and his obvious contempt for all such was … destructive. And expensive. Naturally E-Branch would want him intact, especially if they were going to try that stuff again. Or if they knew about Radu and planned to use him against the dog-Lord …
“Francesco, what more can I tell you?” Nicosia was down-cast. “That’s it, everything …” He looked this way and that as if wishing there were more to say but knowing that the Francezci wouldn’t buy any pretty packaging. He was only interested in facts. And Francesco thought: Yes, he’d make a good, loyal lieutenant. But Frank Potenza spoiled the moment by grinning in a gauntly girlish, what-the-hell fashion and whispering:
“Anyways, it wasn’t all waste.”
And Francesco knew what he meant: that not too much blood had been spilled here. Not spilled, anyway.
But Potenza … was an irritation, a big itch. And sooner or later Francesco knew he would have to scratch. But not while there was ajob to be done. Later, when all of this was over—time enough then to take care of that.
As for Potenza’s immediate superior in the Francezci chain of command, Vincent Ragusa … it might also be time to rethink his position in the grand scheme of things. Jimmy Nicosia would make a better lieutenant for sure. And without complaint, without trying to be an “original thinker.”
But for now:
The Francezci relaxed, smiled and said, “Very well, let it go. Later I have to call Anthony, tell him what’s gone down and find out what’s next. He’s our contact with the Old Man, who we hope will give us his best co-operation.”
The pair of thralls knew who he was referring to: Angelo Francezci, in his pit at Le Manse Madonie. They blanched a little—even Potenza—and instinctively backed off a pace. But Francesco merely smiled, changed the subject and said:
“I don’t think we’ll be in London too long. Luigi is sorting out a helicopter, Vincent is on his way to Edinburgh, and Dancer’s at the Dorchester getting rooms. You two … do nothing; just wait for me to get in touch with you.”
But as he made to leave he glanced back at them and said, “Oh, yes. And before you get out of here make sure that that,”he looked for the last time on Anderson’s remains, “goes into the river.”
After he had left they did just that—opened a trapdoor in the floor and disposed of the evidence. There were several splashes in the morning mist on the Thames; some loud, others faint. The last thing to go was an arm blanched to alabaster. Its hand had a thumb and index finger, and three stumps.
The other arm, already bobbing its way to the sea—nibbled on by small fishes and fresh-water shrimp—had no fingers at all …
IV
ANTHONY AND ANGELO: AFRAID. RADU: AWAKE. BONNIE JEAN: INNOCENT?
TWO HOURS EARLIER, AND MORE THAN A THOUSAND MILES AWAY—It was the first hour of a dim grey dawn under a lowering ceiling of cloud. Slowly churning, the sky released banks of spume-like moisture, not quite rain, to sprawl on the high plateau, pile up against the outer walls of Le Manse Madonie, and roll over them in queasy waves into the courtyard …
Anthony Francezci had been about his business most of the night; with Francesco out of the way—indeed, from the moment Anthony’s brother had left Sicily for England—their grotesque father, Angelo, had been more voluble, more forthcoming. He had more “in common” with Anthony and found him easier to talk to than Francesco, who had always been something of a thorn in his side. As to what they had spent time in the early hours of the morning talking about … just such subjects, and one especially, had served to prompt the nightmares which would later plague Anthony’s dreams.
“Called” by his loathsome father within an hour or so of Francesco’s departure, Anthony had been unable to attend him immediately. But as evening turned to night he had sensed an increase in the mental babble, the telepathic confusion, emanating from below, and in the small hours of the morning he had visited the pit. Then, from an awkward beginning, their “talk” had finally evolved into an hour or so of conversation, broken only by the occasional interruptions of Angelo’s multi-minds …
After that:
Not long before dawn, Anthony had gone to a female thrall for sex, blood—comfort?—then to his own bed intending to sleep until late evening when he was due a call from Francesco. With a little luck his brother would have good or at least promising news from London; and certainly Anthony had news for him:
Namely, the substance of his “conversation” with the Thing in the pit. Or some of it …
Now, with the dawn, he nightmared, by no means an uncommon thing among vampires. For the dawn is not their time; indeed it is the one time when the otherwise mainly invulnerable are most vulnerable—when the worst fears in the subconscious minds of such monsters take on the shapes of reality, and their memories conjure once more the terrors of their youths.
“Tony” Francezci was no exception, though in his case memories out of time were not especially horrific … not to him. He was what he was by birth, and as such had developed free of any lingering impressions of Wamphyri conversion. Therefore he didn’t dream any common thrall’s or lieutenant’s nightmares of what he had been and what he was now, but of what he might yet become! Which was a horror without peer—unless it lay in the hideous shape and substance of his father Angelo, the devolved and ever-devolving Thing in the pit under Le Manse Madonie.
First, before the actual horror, he relived his conversation with the Old Ferenczy more or less as it had taken place; except he was vaguely aware that somewhere behind the “spoken” words something darker was building, as in the atmosphere of a well-lit room that gradually glooms over with the slow but irresistible approach of a storm:
“Father,” he whispered into the mouth of the echoing pit. “Francesco has gone to England. He has men with him; they will seek out Radu’s thralls and follow them to the dog-Lord in the hour of his resurgence. And we have heeded your words: already our advance party is … interrogating a man believed to be in league with the one who raided our vault, this ‘Harry’ of whom you spoke. Also, we’ll soon have men in Scotland who will seek out Radu’s thralls there, discover their weaknesses, and eventually destroy them. But now we need your help, too. For only you can see afar and know what’s in the minds of men …” Anthony paused, and in a while continued:
“And father, I know that you have been spending more and more time looking outwards, for I have felt it. Even Francesco has felt it, and he is … well, far less sensitive than I am. So, anything you have learned could be of great benefit …”
The mouth of the pit was open; its electrified grille was switched off and Anthony had raised one flap of the cover. The spotlights in the cavern walls blazed down, lighting the pit’s surroundings in overlapping circles of stark white light. Outside that central glare was blackness, and Anthony’s shadow an elongated inkblot poured on the cold stone floor behind him.
The reason the power was off and the shaft half-open was simple: it was a precaution the Francezci brothers used to insure against inadvertent self-electrocution. The old well was after all a deep one, and Angelo no longer capable of attempting an escape. His disorder, the rampant metamorphism that had altered him to a protoplasmic Thing, was such that he no longer had any control over his bulk. It controlled itself, albeit mindlessly, and therefore was mainly without menace. The current procedures existed from a time when Angelo had retained a small measure of control; that they were still in use … was simply another precaution. It was never a good idea to second-guess the Old Ferenczy.
Anthony leaned on the low stone wall to look down into the silent, sentient throat of hell. Within the shaft, light penetrated maybe nine or ten feet; below that the darkness increased commensurate with the depth, until it seemed absolute. And this was a darkness that seethed …
But while Anthony could feel Angelo’s hidden intelligence (or madness
), and while he knew that he had his father’s attention, still the telepathic aether carried no message but merely conveyed an awareness of Angelo’s vast mental presence; this in addition to that almost physical foreboding on the rim of Anthony’s subconscious perceptions, warning him that something was coming.
Then, losing patience, unwilling to remain in this place any longer conversing with himself (and even more unwilling to meet the unknown something when it chose to arrive) he tried a threat, however subtle:
“Father, always remember: it is still true that whatever endangers me endangers you. Should the Francezcis come to harm and Le Manse Madonie fall, then we all fall with it. Including the Old Ferenczy. For who would suffer such as you to live except myself and my brother?” Perhaps during the actual conversation he had not been so forthright, but these were the words he would have liked to use, and so he used them in his dream.
The pit seemed to cling to one word, and threw it back at him as an echo: Suffer, suffer, suffer …
But it was in fact Anthony’s father, goaded into “speech” at last. And:
Suffer? Angelo’s telepathic voice—but a definite voice now, gurgling in Anthony’s head—took over where the echo had left off. And you know all about suffering, do you? And you can tell me something about suffering, eh? Hah! The worst thing you have ever suffered was being born. But what I have suffered … is worse than death!
Argumentative. But it was better than nothing. And Anthony was skilled at word-games in his own right. If he could involve his father—inveigle or even challenge him—then with luck he might also be able to lead him in a more co-operative direction. Wherefore: “What?” he said. “But if your fate is so disenchanting—if what you are suffering really is worse than death, the true death—am I to understand you would prefer death? If so, then speak up! For as you are probably aware your other son, my brother Francesco, has been counselling just such a solution to your problem for many a long year!” Again the words were harder than those he had actually used. But in any case:
Suddenly the psychic aether was ripped apart in a demented telepathic storm!
DO IT!—Like a great roar of joy!—subsiding at once to a hoarse, crazed gurgle of anticipation: Do it! Kill the Ferenczy! Kill the old bastard! Kill all of us!
Kill us, yesss!—A woman’s voice this time, and one that Anthony recognized immediately. It was Julietta Sclafani, vampirized by Francesco before the brothers had sent her to hell, bubbling now with an evil that could never know release except in the death of the Thing in the pit. Kill Angelo. And kill us with him—kill all of us, now—and put an end to our hell!
And: Oh, ho-ho-ho! Oh, ha-ha-haaarrr! A mad voice, almost entirely insane—yet knowing and willing enough to shriek at the end of its burst of crazed laughter, Kill, kill, kill him! Kill Angelo Ferenczy!
And a host of others—all of the brothers’ and Angelo’s victims, who had gone to feed him in his pit—all joining in the blast from the gross mad brain that was the nucleus of the mutant Thing. All of these identities imprinted upon or absorbed within his mind, much as his protoplasm had absorbed their flesh. And just exactly like that metamorphic flesh, they were no longer under Angelo’s control. Anthony knew it at once: his father had lost control of the imprisoned multi-minds!
“But how … ?” he wanted to know as the babble subsided to a background rumble.
Because of “this Harry,” as you see fit to call him, the Thing in the pit answered at once. This Englishman, this Harry whose second name is Keogh, and whose dead friends—and they are legion!—call “the Necroscope.” Do you know what a Necroscope is, Anthony, my dear Anthony?
Anthony was not an ignorant man; no one with the weight of years, the guile of the Wamphyri could be entirely ignorant. “A … a viewer on the dead?” he answered, wonderingly.
Indeed! his father answered. And more, a speaker with the dead! But didn’t I say so right from the beginning? The man who broke into your treasure vault, your intruder, this Harry is—
—NO! An angry voice shouted him down. DON’T LET HIM TALK! THROUGH HIS VAMPIRE SONS, HE PUTS HARRY IN DANGER! And the rest of them joined in—a tidal wave of mental emanations from the pit.
But Angelo, whose psychic maelstrom had sucked them in in the first place, could not be shouted down. Aiming his sending directly into Anthony’s reeling mind, he said: Me, they feared, which was my only hold on them. They didn’t know what I could—what I might—do to them, or what I was capable of doing. They feared me because they were my prisoners, trapped in me as I am trapped in this pit, and no hope of rescue. But him, this Harry, they love. Because he would set them free … by destroying me! And Anthony, ah, my Anthony, despite everything you’ve learned and think you know about the passions of the world, human love is stronger far than fear.
“Father,” Anthony said then, trying to aim his thoughts as Angelo had done, to break through the telepathic tumult thrown up against him, “this Harry is as good as dead. If he’s really the man who broke into our vault, then he has always been dead, and it was just a matter of time. But tomorrow I’m speaking to Francesco, and we shall make Keogh’s death a priority. You say he’s a Necroscope—what, the Necroscope?—and talks to dead people? Well, take it from me: soon he’ll be in the best possible place to practice his skills!”
You don’t understand, do you? his father said then. Do you even believe me? Doubtful. But powers such as this one possesses … you have no idea what you’re up against! Until he came along, Radu Lykan was the greatest possible threat, the greatest threat imaginable. But this man …
Anthony could picture him shaking his head, as if in disbelief.
“But doesn’t that say it all, father?” he asked. “I mean, haven’t you said it all? ‘This man,’ you said. Well that’s all he is, a man. While we are Wamphyri!”
He talks to dead people … talks to dead people … dead people! Angelo started to babble—to echo himself—and immediately reined back. It was the multi-minds interfering with his thought processes. He talks to people in their graves, he began again. And all the world’s knowledge is down there with them!
“But even if what you say were possible,” Anthony argued, in an attempt to steer his father in a useful direction, “what good is dead knowledge? How may anyone harness such knowledge, to make it work for him?”
Angelo gave a snort of derision, frustration. Huh! And I had thought only one of my sons was a fool! Then, before Anthony could protest or make any further comment, Now listen:
The dead converse, in their graves, with each other. The first time I took a victim, absorbed into myself, I suspected it was so. Don’t you understand? The mind went on, in me! And what of those buried in the earth, or gone up into the air in smoke? It is the same: their thoughts—spirits if you will—live on. And now, through the Necroscope Harry Keogh, they’ve learned to converse in their perpetual darkness. Love him? Of course they love him, and they’ll do anything for him!
Even against his better judgement, Anthony was beginning to believe. His father was making more “sense” than he’d ever known him to make; his words and ideas, however wild, grotesque, seemed based in some sort of logic. Turning the concept over in his mind, he said, “But … but a Necroscope?”
THE Necroscope! his father snapped, startling him. There is only one. Which is why they can’t let him come to harm!
“They?”
The dead, fool! The teeming dead! The Great Majority!
At which Anthony believed he had him. And: “Only one Necroscope, who talks to the dead, eh?” He smiled into the mouth of the pit, but mirthlessly. “And all of this a waste of time, eh, father? Of my valuable time. For if it was true, how would you know? How do you know, father? Or are you perhaps the second Necroscope? Is that it? That you, too, talk to the dead?”
In the long silence that followed, the dark something at the back of Anthony’s mind crept closer, and the light seemed to dim a little in the cavern of the pit. But then:
No,
his father told him. I can’t talk to the dead. But I can hear some of them! My dead, talking through me! They converse with each other, Anthony, my faithful—or faithless—Anthony. And, since the Necroscope Harry Keogh was here, they also converse with others outside of me! As to what they say: I hear the outgoing because it goes out from me, from all the minds that are my mind. But the incoming is secret, and known only to my multi-minds. Except they are no longer mine! But I do know that they accept Harry Keogh’s talents. And also that you, and your brother—that we, the Ferenczys—are not safe from him, not even here. How can you doubt it? Didn’t he come here, commit an impossible crime, and leave without leaving a trace?
“Like a ghost, yes,” Anthony whispered, thinking back on it. “But he did leave a trace; we have him on film.”
He talks to them, (his father ignored him). And all the world’s mysteries lie buried in the earth, or aimlessly drifting in the sky. Who can say what he has learned from the dead? “Like a ghost,”you say—but you don’t know the half of it. This man moves through solid rock, through steel doors—and through doors of his own making!
“What?”
Do you believe in telepathy, Anthony, my dear sweet Tony? (It was as if he had changed the subject entirely.)
“Telepathy? Of course. Among the Old Wamphyri, it was the prized skill of the thought-thief. So you’ve always instructed me, and your own mentalism proves it. As for Francesco and myself: we were born into this world, where such skills were not required.”
I told you no lie, my Tony. Many of the Old Wamphyri were gifted in strange arts, but not all of them. I too was born in this world—it took me seven hundred years to develop my art! As for yourself and your brother … well, who can say? Perhaps it skipped a generation entirely. Or maybe there’s still time. I would like to think so. But on the other hand, time has been known to bring about changes which are far less desirable. And sometimes the bloodlines hold true, passing things down to the next in line that … that should never be passed down to anyone.
