by Brian Lumley
“Let me show you something,” he said. “Maybe that will be explanation enough.”
He concentrated, and with Mesmer maintaining contact let Möbius mathematics commence their metaphysical mutation, their evolution, across the screen of his mind. “The numbers, symbols and formulae that govern the universe,” he explained, and even his voice was hushed. “Now stay with me … come with me.” And he felt Mesmer’s presence closing with his.
Come with you? Mesmer’s dead voice was the merest whisper; his attention was riveted—mesmerized?—by the ever-changing display.
Before he could withdraw, even if he would, Harry formed a door and drew Mesmer across the threshold. The Möbius Continuum, the Necroscope switched his conversation to pure thought, for even thoughts have weight in Möbius spacetime. From here I can go … anywhere! And take you with me. (Mesmer could sense it was true, that this place was a great Universal Crossroads). But I won’t take you far because your place is here, or if not “here,” then at a parallel point in space.
And this—this place—is all space? Mesmer’s awe was transmissible; Harry felt it, no less than the good doctor himself.
Yes, he answered, the inside and outside both. A gateway to everywhere, containing everything that has been, is now, or will be.
Has been? Will be? Time, too?
Let me show you, said Harry. He found a past-time door and drew Mesmer to the threshold. A million, million miles away, or so it seemed—but distant in time, not space—the faint blue haze of human creation, mankind’s beginning, was like some vast long-exploded galaxy. Streaming out from this astonishing starburst, seeming to intensify and multiply as they rushed towards the time-door, a myriad neon-blue filaments traced the lives of people who had been and many who still were. Indeed, one of the threads crossed the threshold and connected with Harry himself, appearing to thrust him, the door, and Franz Anton Mesmer, too, before itself into the future.
The effect was dizzying. The time-door was the singularity men call NOW; to maintain the status quo, it must flee from the past into the future … as everything in creation does. Except with the past displayed beyond the immundane frame of the door, and Harry’s blue-thread—the line of his life, his lifeline—seeming to thrust him ahead of it, he and Mesmer were actually witnessing time’s unwinding! And all accompanied by an orchestrated one-note ahhhhhhhhhh! like a massed sighing of angels.
Mesmer was stunned. But before he could comment, or find words to try, the Necroscope drew back from the door and found its twin—but this time a doorway to the future. And no need to explain what this was, as he and the good doctor gazed away and out into every tomorrow. Those myriad neon threads sighing away into the ever-expanding future … And new lives blazing into being, scintillant sapphire threads separating from their parent lifelines to hurtle on alone, signifying birth and life … And others fading to amethyst and gradually expiring along with their weary sources, signifying old age and death … And the Necroscope’s lifeline continually unwinding from him, luring him into the future, while the angelic chorus went on and on: Ahhhhhhhhhh!
Those lines of blue light, Mesmer said after a while, but very quietly. I know what they are, and why I don’t have one.
But you did have one, Harry told him, upon a time. And he conjured a door at Mesmer’s co-ordinates.
And did I sigh and soar, and burn as bright as they do?
“Brighter than most,” the Necroscope answered, as he and Mesmer emerged from the Möbius Continuum together at the dead man’s tomb.
Do you think so, Harry? Really? Mesmer sank down into his place, which he would never leave again.
“Yes, I really do. That’s why I had to show you that which you yourself might well have imagined and sought after, without even knowing what it was.”
My fluidum?
“I honestly don’t know, but it could be. Even now scientists all over the world are seeking for a Grand Unification.”
But if it is so, then it’s so much greater than I might ever have imagined! An incredible aether—a Great Fluidum—connecting the Earth, the moon, planets and stars, the sun and suns, the universe itself, past, present and future, and every creature in it. All in the mind … of a man?
But Harry hastily shook his head. Being nominated as the All-Important Factor in something as big as this seemed like a great blasphemy. “No, I simply tap into it. It’s there without me. But I wouldn’t be here without it. Nothing would.”
Mesmer’s morale was boosted, uplifted; the Necroscope felt it in him: a sudden soaring of his spirits. It isn’t the way I imagined it, but it does exist! he said.
“Well maybe,” Harry was cautious. “I mean, I won’t lie to you, sir. I use it and it works for me, but I don’t pretend to understand what it is.”
Much like myself, Mesmer nodded. I used my—my hypnotism, yes—without understanding it.
“But it worked. And it can work again, if just this once. Isn’t that what matters?”
You’re so very far ahead of me. Yet you’ve come to me for help …
“You were first in your field.”
But I can perceive no outward sign of imbalance. And from what little I have seen inside … Necroscope, your mind seems very well-ordered to me!
“But it isn’t. Someone is fooling with it—fooling with me—and it could well be a matter of life and death.”
Do you say is fooling with it, or has fooled with it?
“I’m sorry?”
Who do you know—who are you in contact with—who might wish you harm or seek to control you?
“Are you taking the case?” Harry heard muted voices. Real, living voices. There were other people in the cemetery now and he would have to be careful. The sooner he could get finished here the better.
Taking the case? Mesmer answered, as if suprised at such a suggestion. Why, so it would appear!
Harry thought about it. Who was he in regular contact with who might seek to harm or control him? His enemies? R.L. Stevenson Jamieson said he had enemies, anyway. B.J. Mirlu? No, for she … was innocent. He backed off from the very thought. But:
AH! GREAT GOD IN HEAVEN! Mesmer cried then, so suddenly it shook Harry to his roots. And more quietly, in a sort of disbelieving whisper: Show me . . show me that again.
“Show you what?” Harry was mystified.
That girl, that woman. She flickered over your mind’s eye and was gone. But the picture was vivid. And she was the image—the living image—of someone I knew once, who I can never forget.
“B.J.?” In the Necroscope’s mind, immediate conflict. His denial was instinctive: “But how could you possibly know B.J.?” And a moment later he realized that Mesmer had said nothing of the sort. He had only said that B.J. was “the image of someone he had known.” And Harry began to sweat, because from deep inside—from a hidden place—something warned him that indeed Mesmer might have known her. And if the good doctor looked any deeper, he would know he had known her!
But B.J. was innocent.
Of what? (Harry argued with himself.)
Of anything, everything!
Innocent? An innocent with a killer’s instinct? In London, I saw her kill one man and try to kill another!
They were my enemies. I owe her my life for that. She has become my life! And I have become … her wee man!
The full moon! A wolf-head in silhouette!
The Necroscope’s mind was wide open, unguarded, and Mesmer witness to all that passed through it. And despite Harry’s confusion—his sudden terror? —he held it open. Because this was what he’d wanted Mesmer to see … wasn’t it? Or was there stuff in there that he couldn’t let anyone see? Stuff that belonged to someone else?
Harry’s mind began spinning in ever-decreasing circles, a mental vertigo he couldn’t pull out of. But through the kaleidoscopic chaos of colliding ideas and conflicting knowledge, one thing stayed uppermost: the fact of B.J.’s innocence.
Oh, really? But the look on her face as she squeezed the
trigger of that crossbow. And the Thing in the animal shelter. Wamphyri! Wamphyri!
I wasn’t able to see her face in that dark garage! And in the animal shelter, the light was so very poor.
But what about the other time? When the red-robed priests—Drakuls?—attacked us in the valley of the Spey?
It was a dream, a nightmare like all the others I’ve been having.
Wamphyri!
Just fucking nightmares, all of them!
(His levels were interfacing, faster and faster.)
Radu! … the Ferenczys! … the Drakuls!—
—And B.J.?
“But B.J. is innocent!” he cried out loud—and collapsed there and then, crumpling sideways from his seat on the slab to the dirty gravel at the weedy foot of the grave.
But Mesmer was with him, in contact with the Necroscope’s mind, witness to his torment. And knowing that he was responsible for—that he had somehow brought about—Harry’s seizure, the good doctor was “galvanized” to instinctive action. He took charge; his hypnotic presence swelled enormous in the chaos of Harry’s colliding realities; his power flowed back into him as if it had never been absent. And:
SLEEP! Mesmer commanded, demanded. BE STILL, HARRY! SLEEP WELL, SLEEP DEEP, NECROSCOPE! HEAR MY VOICE AND ONLY MINE. AND OBEY IT. FOR MY VOICE IS A REFUGE. MY VOICE IS PEACE AND TRUTH. OBEY ME, HARRY, AND SLEEP. AND WHEN YOU AWAKEN, BE WELL …
At which a vast and soothing darkness seemed to wash over the Necroscope’s troubled mind. He sighed as his limbs stopped twitching, his heart slowed from pounding, and his wildly staring eyes blinked and grew calm, and finally closed as his head lolled back on the cold gravel chips.
Then there came the sound of running footsteps, and anxious voices raised in startled inquiry. But for a while these were the last real, physical sounds that Harry heard, and all that remained was Mesmer’s voice telling him to:
BE STILL, BE QUIET AND REST, NECROSCOPE. LET ME WORK NOW, AND TRY TO FIND YOUR WOUND AND HEAL IT.
Harry did as he was told, opened his mind, felt Mesmer’s powerful mental probe stirring in the wells of his memory. But that was all.
He certainly didn’t feel the hands that gentled him onto a stretcher …
Voices, approaching and receding, coming and going, like a difficult radio station that won’t hold still. And pleading? Harry recognized his beloved Ma’s voice—pleading on his behalf? And Doctor Franz Anton Mesmer’s, trying to reassure her. But it was all so very fuzzy, distant and delirious, as if he were in some kind of traumatized sleep. Or as if …
… As if he were under an hypnotic influence.
But this was only part of it! His Ma sounded close to hysteria. And now you have to concede that I was right, Keenan. If we had told Harry—if my son had learned the entire truth, as we know it, all at one time—what then? And even now, if Mesmer wasn’t there to see him through this, what would become of him? And all because of the merest hint, the merest suggestion, that this B.J. might be other than she appears! (The Necroscope could picture his Ma wringing her hands.)
Then Sir Keenan Gormley: Mary, Mary! But Mesmer is there! It’s why we didn’t interfere: because we knew that if anything were to go wrong, Harry would be in the best possible hands.
And finally Mesmer himself: Leave it to me, the good doctor told them, and everyone else who was listening in, but with such an air of authority that it was plain his faith in himself was restored. Leave it to me, please. For since it seems I initiated this attack, surely I should be the one to correct it? Ah, but if only you had come to me first …
But we couldn’t know he would come to you! (Keenan Gormley again.) We simply advised, suggested, hinted, in our way, that Harry should see a specialist. We never for a moment guessed he would seek out the hypnotist! When he did—when we knew he was coming to Meersburg—we had so little time. And the last thing we wanted was that he should change his mind.
Well, he didn’t change his mind, Mesmer said, and he did come. As for myself, I doubt if it was a coincidence. For I’ve seen inside his mind—and what I saw was amazing! It seems to me that the past and future are all one to Harry, and that his visit was preordained. Or previsioned?
It’s possible, Harry’s Ma cut in. He seems to have inherited at least a residuum of Alec Kyle’s talent.
Exactly! said Sir Keenan. Perhaps that’s why I don’t seem to worry over him the way you do: because I have real faith in his talents. In the talents of E-Branch in general, I mean. In which I’m surely justified. They rarely let me down in my lifetime, and Harry hasn’t let me down … since.
His words, while spoken from the heart, might have been a little more diplomatic. The Necroscope’s Ma, who seemed so much calmer now, was rather more so. Despite your sincerity, Keenan, she said, still I won’t stop worrying. For just as E-Branch was your baby, Harry is mine. That is why I worry over him!
For a moment there was an awkward silence, until Mesmer said, Well, and now that you’ve told me something of his problems, maybe I can work something out. He trusts me; his sleeping mind is open to me; I have his permission, and access. But there are things—or more properly times, memories—that are hidden, forbidden, where there is no access. Not to me, anyway. Harry’s “injuries,” the blockages in his mind, must have occurred at these times and are hiding in these forbidden memories.
And you mustn’t interfere with them. (Harry’s Ma again.) For that’s what caused his collapse.
But … it’s why he came to me! (Mesmer’s bewildered protest.) Also, I may have the answer to his problem. That woman I saw in his mind. I don’t know how, but unless I’m very much mistaken I’ve seen her before. Except I know it can’t be, for that was close to one hundred and seventy years ago!
Oh, it can be, Harry’s Ma told him. Believe me, it can be.
And Sir Keenan corroborated it. Don’t ask us for explanations, Doctor, but just as Harry showed you incredible things, so could we tell you some. Such things as have been the Necroscope’s life, and almost his death. And you’re right, they are what we’re up against, and that girl is part of it. What is it you know about her?
When I was in Paris, Mesmer answered, a gypsy woman foretold my death. Myself, I was never superstitious, but this time … there was something about this woman. She said I would die in 1814, and it preyed on my mind. Then, in the summer of 1813, back in Switzerland, I was visited by a girl who told me I had once spoken with her mother—a seer of the Szgany Mirlu! The girl’s name, if memory serves, was Barbara Jane Mirlu; she preferred to be called by her initials. An odd preference for the period.
Not necessarily, Sir Keenan told him. A person may change her name to hide her true identity, but retain the initials as a fad or reminder, or as a constant. It would be easy for such a person to slip up in the use of a false name, but not if she simply used the initials.
A criminal, perhaps? As yet, Mesmer had not entirely accepted or digested what they’d told him. But in the next moment: Ah, no! I see! You mean, someone who has lived too long!
Exactly, said Harry’s Ma, grimly. And well over a hundred years too long! This B.J. Mirlu is alive today, Doctor, and she has hypnotized my son. She’s his problem. He’s … in love with her! These blockages in his mind, she put them there to obscure her true purpose.
Then surely they must be removed. (Mesmer’s shrug.)
But he is like two people, two personalities! Mary Keogh cried. Break down the barriers that this woman has constructed, and he’ll fight himself to the death. My son’s reality has been so undermined that … that you wouldn’t believe the things he has been through.
Things which he has survived, Sir Keenan pointed out.
But for how much longer? Harry’s Ma rounded on him.
You do me no credit, Mesmer murmured, directing his words at Mary Keogh. Are you forgetting that your son—a living man—has spoken to me, or that he has shown me certain things? I might have doubted or disbelieved before I met the Necroscope, but no longer. Moreover, I no longe
r doubt myself, for which I have him to thank. And I tell you that despite all your fears, still I may be able to do something for him.
Sir Keenan spoke up again. It seems we’ve digressed. You were telling us about your meeting with B.J. Mirlu, in 1813?
Ah, yes! Mesmer answered. She reminded me that all those years earlier, in Paris, I had succeeded in putting her mother into a trance. Now she wanted me to try to do the same to her. Except B.J. would allow no apparatus, no special setting, only the power of the eyes, the mind. I sensed that in fact she intended to hypnotize me—she used the term “beguile”—but I went ahead anyway. It was like a challenge, but a challenge I lost, for she completely defeated me! Which is to say, she put me to sleep quite effortlessly. Her skill was in every way superior to mine. But she did me no harm, and before leaving she told me it had been a matter of pride: what I had done to her mother, she had now done to me.
And the curse? Sir Keenan pressed him. That you would die in 1814?
Well I did, of course. But as B.J. explained, it wasn’t a Gypsy curse. Her mother had simply looked into the future and seen my death. Telling me had been spiteful, however: her way of paying me back.
For what? (This from Mary Keogh.)
For failing to beat me at her own game—hypnotism, as you call it now.
(Sir Keenan’s incorporeal nod of understanding.) She was a vampire thrall, testing out her powers. You are to be congratulated, Doctor. Even an “expert” in metaphysical skills would expect to be beaten by someone touched by vampirism. And B.J.’s forebears … well, they’ve been more than merely “touched,” and for a very long time!
But that was the mother, Mesmer answered. While the daughter, this B.J., was different again. Indeed a beguiler!
