by Brian Lumley
“—Why I am here,” the other finished it for him. “Yes, we have known your father for many years, but it must be said that it’s very many years since the office has had any close contact with him—at least thirty! He had little need for lawyers and the like, and we didn’t know him socially at all. Except by his excellent reputation at the College of Higher Education, he was almost a complete stranger to us. And now, alas…too late!”
“Ah!” Hemmings at once replied. “But now, with myself—his son and heir—an association which is only just beginning, perhaps?” And shrugging, shaking his head sadly, he smiled what he hoped was a wan, melancholy smile.
If Asquith was impressed it scarcely showed as he replied:
“His son and only heir, I believe, yes…” And after a moment’s pause, gazing penetratingly at Hemmings, he went on: “You mentioned yesterday’s immediate, necessary requirements—tasks which at first you were able to handle yourself before, er, the shock set in.”
“Why yes,” Hemmings nodded. “A doctor had to be called, to ascertain the cause and certify the death. I’m a professor, Mr. Asquith, a mathematician—not a physician! And then the mortuary had to be informed, in order that my father could be taken from the house and the funerary arrangements could be made. But…why do you ask?”
“Oh, nothing of any great importance; in the circumstances you were understandably upset, to say the least. And that being the case you should be complimented that despite your state of mind you were able to act so swiftly and logically. Of course, there was no one else here—no siblings or other relatives—to advise you one way or the other.”
“Advise me?” Hemmings frowned.
“You see, in my experience, bereaved families are frequently so out of sorts, so bewildered, that at first they do very little. Their loss is unacceptable: stunned, they permit their loved one to simply lie there, perhaps thinking that he or she will wake up! Why, it’s even possible that the custom of allowing the deceased to ‘lie in state’ for a period has its origin in just such circumstances. But you—”
“Ah, I see!” Hemmings cut him short, his voice hardening as his true nature began to assert itself. “You think that I acted in haste, and it’s possible you wonder why.”
“Not so—not at all!” The other waved placating hands. But Hemmings would have none of that:
“No, no, I believe I can readily understand your concerns,” he growled. “And I don’t especially care for the nature of your enquiries. But on the other hand…it could be my fault. When I called your office this morning, it’s quite possible I didn’t make absolutely clear the circumstances of my father’s passing. I have a copy of the death certificate, Mr. Asquith…he died not only of old age but mainly of advanced cancer of the gut!”
“Ahhh!” The other’s face fell. “Then there’s really no need to—”
But again Hemmings cut him short: “So, if you would care to accompany me to his room, where the bed still bears the indentation of his form, and the atmosphere still reeks of that awful disease…”
But Asquith was already shaking his head. “Entirely unnecessary, I assure you. If I had known from the beginning…but I didn’t. You have told me all I need to know, with the exception of just one thing. Ah, and there’s one other thing which I must tell you.”
“Oh?”
“In a moment. But first—did you by chance discover a will among your father’s effects, in one of his drawers perhaps?”
“A will? Why no, I didn’t so much as think of it! Maybe we should go to his study right now, where in my presence you can search through his documents.”
“My thoughts precisely,” said Asquith. “You see, I haven’t as yet told you everything—which wasn’t deliberate! I simply forgot to mention one other contact we had with your father.”
Hemmings frowned again. “A contact? Recently?”
“Yes. Some months ago, probably when he first began to feel ill, your father sent us a letter advising us that if he should die we should look for a revised will in his study—because he was considering revisions to the one he had given into our keeping that time all of thirty years ago.”
“Thirty…thirty years ago,” Hemmings repeated him stumblingly.
“I was just a very junior partner at that time, of course,” Asquith went on, “but the old document was still there where my seniors have kept it safe, and I have it with me. Since you are your father’s sole son and heir, a formal reading isn’t necessary unless you desire it. I am of course aware of the contents, but you may read the document for yourself when our business is concluded.”
Hemmings quickly recovered his wits, and grunted, “Then by all means let’s get it over with! Come, we’ll go to his study.”
They did, but found nothing of importance. The old man had been in debt to no one; it only remained to cancel his pension and pay various household bills, which amounted to very little.
“With your permission,” said Asquith, “I shall see to those details personally. Meanwhile, this is yours.” He handed over a manilla envelope containing the old will. “You’ll find that all has been left to you: the house, monies, some small investments…everything. Will you sell this place when all is settled?”
“No,” Hemmings replied, carefully opening the brittle parchment document. “I’ll let the house out for now, and perhaps one day return to live here.”
“Then again with your permission I’ll carry out the necessary searches, prepare documents of transfer and ownership, and send them on for your approval and signature.”
“Thank you,” said Hemmings, quickly scanning the will, which was written in his father’s neat, unfaltering, and thirty-years younger hand.
“There is only one requirement on your part,” said Asquith: “the final paragraph, which I’m sure has been answered in full. For as you pointed out, you are a Professor; moreover a mathematician, as was the old gentleman before you.”
At which Hemmings at once transferred his gaze to the paragraph in question:
“…All of which being contingent on the understanding that the aforesaid, Gordon J. Hemmings, has not only survived me but is grown into a law-abiding, principled, and worthy citizen…” Followed by the old man’s distinctive signature, the date, and nothing more.
And having read, finally the great leech fabricated another melancholy smile, nodded and said: “Oh, indeed! It would appear I have followed in his footsteps! For even now at the end we’re as one; and for however long, something of him will continue in me…”
As Hemmings’ memories faded, returning him to the present where he walked the Kirkaldy promenade:
So then, he thought. It suddenly dawns on me that my father was not in fact my first time but second, for my mother came first. But I shall continue to consider him my first—my ‘conscious’ first, at least—if only because I can’t remember her!
Or was that actual first time other than murder? Rather, a gift of life from his mother, and the instinctive acceptance or taking of it by a hungry, even greedy new-born child—himself. Whichever, he had known nothing of his birth until that morning by the old man’s deathbed, when he had deliberately, if experimentally, snatched what little life-force remained in him.
And so, to all intents and purposes, his father had indeed been his first. While in the two years gone by since then—
—Everything that mattered had seemed to come together for him, and quickly; while everything that mattered not at all had come apart with equal rapidity. Finally, financially stable, he had become lax at the University, and the classes he taught had suffered as a result. His “inheritance”—which worked out more a sufficiency than a plenitude—had nevertheless buoyed him up, making him increasingly assertive and far less inclined to heed the advice of his so-called peers and superiors.
Peers? He had none, not that he would ever have accepted as such. As for “superiors”—that was a laugh! What, those doddering, stunted old pedagogues; those puffed-up so-called intellectuals wh
o taught standing on the shoulders of genuine, long dead geniuses without ever attempting to climb higher, seemingly failing to even realize there were just such elevated levels they could ascend to? Because of course they couldn’t! Not them, never! Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity was fifty years old, yet they would still try to explain and—for God’s sake!—if there was such a Creator—“teach” it; as if it was a brand new, extraordinary, immutable idea, without even guessing at its higher functions…because they couldn’t! Pythagoras’ doctrines were some two and a half millennia older, yet they were mainly forgotten; while his studies in respect of the purging of the soul and its release from metempsychosis weren’t so much as mentioned, or were at best dismissed as nonsensical, along with his admixture of esoteric mysticism and mathematics.
But all of these mainly neglected things, matters of metaphysical space, time, and mind, were to him, to Professor Gordon J. Hemmings, the very essence of being: seminal sources of universal knowledge and existence.
If only, he conjectured, Pythagoras and Einstein—and perhaps Euclid and Riemann, and one or two others; for example the necromancer and Great Beast, Aliester Crowley, who he felt sure had come very close at times to solving certain mysteries—if only they had been able to get together in the flesh; what arcane prodigies might have emerged from that! Nothing mundane, be sure! Perhaps, he continued to conjecture, perhaps like himself Diophantus of Alexandria, and certainly Leonardo da Vinci and a small handful of others, they too had been mutants of the sort his father had posited. But far ahead of their time, unique examples of transcendent genes, it appeared they had all evolved along very divergent and occasionally darker pathways; himself especially.
But his thoughts had wandered, and now he drew them back: to his “superiors” at the University, yes, and one in particular…
Came the time when he had been summoned to the vice-chancellor’s chambers to explain his alleged shortcomings. His students, apparently, were the main complainants! How were they supposed or expected to attain an understanding of higher mathematics when their instructor was wont to stray so far from the subject matter? For instance: what had necromancy, metaphysics, numerology and various other primitive occult and long-rejected theories and obscure studies got to do with algebraic equations or differential and integral calculus?
“Yes, it is true,” he had explained, “that I often refer to an original theory or its source in order to show the evolution of a system. Mathematics has a history no less than every other science. If not for Einstein’s General Relativity, would we now have nuclear power, quantum mechanics or the ongoing search for black holes?”
“Oh, and numerology?” Latimer Calloway, Professor of Anthropology—soon to be Professor Emeritus, since he was then into his last few remaining weeks as vice-chancellor—had been less than impressed; and not at all with Hemmings’ recently and very noticeably enhanced air of superiority.
Hemmings had shrugged. “But man has always associated names with numbers, and has always found them mystical. As an anthropologist you are surely aware of that connection, and as a mathematician I refuse to ignore it! Are you saying you find nothing magical—or let’s say ‘mystical’—about numbers? Let me give you an example of what I am getting at. How can it be that with our ability to reduce numbers, especially where time is concerned, down to billionths and even nanoseconds, we are unable to resolve pi? It’s a so-called irrational number, as are so many others that can’t be pinned down to precise values. Why is the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle invariably five units in length wherever the right-angled sides are three and four such units? There is no explanation, it’s simply so. Or perhaps not so simply.”
“But—”
“Let me continue,” Hemmings had insisted. “I spoke of time. If time is but a fourth dimension of our universe, perhaps the answers to all such questions may be found in a fifth or even a sixth; and many of our supposedly finest theoretical physicists have been at least considering the possibility of just such external or ulterior dimensions for many decades—and right there you have a very strong connection at least with metaphysics, if not the other, er, perhaps less acceptable doctrines.”
To which Calloway had replied: “All of which comes close to sophistry!”
“Not so, and I will tell you why. I believe that unless my students become completely immersed in such mysteries—unless I seed in them an absolute fascination with numbers—how then may they aspire to mastery of the subject?”
More sophistry? And for several long moments the vice-chancellor had remained silent, a hand stroking his chin under thin lips and frowning eyes. Until finally he said: “This is not the first time we have heard complaints. We know that you have most recently suffered a bereavement, but since returning from Edinburgh your entire demeanour would seem to have changed. In fact it has even been suggested that you do not so much teach or try to inform your students as convince yourself! That you have become something of a doctrinaire; that you are inclined to carry unorthodox principals to impractical, unworkable extremes! Well if so it simply isn’t good enough, Professor Hemmings.”
Unabashed and on the contrary angered, Hemmings had replied “And as to your own personal opinion?”
“I shall hold that in reserve—for the moment. Suffice it to say that as of now we shall watch how you go, and very carefully.”
Hemmings had taken that not only as his dismissal, but also as an insult and a threat. “We shall watch how you go,” indeed! Well, he would tell them where they could go, and how quickly!
And sneering scornfully he’d stalked from the vice-chancellor’s chambers, collected his personal effects—plus a handful of books from certain shelves in the library—and returned at once to Edinburgh.
A brief notice on the university’s information boards a few days later had acknowledged his resignation…
Calloway, that apathetic cretin!…Hemmings now thought as he walked the Kirkaldy esplanade. Ah but then, he had paid for his insouciance in the end! For Professor Emeritus Latimer Calloway had become…what, Hemmings’ second? Well, his true third, if he included his mother. He had yet to make up his mind decisively on that one.
And as for now: now he was seeking his ninth.
Yesterday had been the eighth, and a barely adequate tidbit at that. It concerned the great leech that he felt so hungry so soon. Obviously that limping, down-and-out drug addict had been on his “last legs,” literally! His life-force, or his soul—as the Pythagoreans would doubtless have had it—had already been ebbing when Hemmings took him. He had sufficed, if only for the moment; but now on this desolate strand that moment had passed, and the need inside Hemmings was once again gnawing at him. Oh, he knew he could manage for a while longer, but still he didn’t want to.
On the other hand, perhaps he didn’t have to. For as he was about to turn back and head for the railway station, finally he had found what might well be that ninth victim he was searching for.
Here, midway along the esplanade, in the lee of a sea wall, an open-ended shelter containing a wooden bench provided refuge from inclement weather and a place to rest or simply to sit and gaze out across the sea. Right now it was occupied by a man and his scrawny dog, a young German Shepherd by its looks. Glancing all about and seeing no one else in the vicinity, Hemmings drew closer and stepped into the comparative privacy of the shelter.
The man seated on the bench, where he was eating a sandwich and feeding his dog with dry crusts and scraps from a paper bag on his knees, was exactly the sort of fellow Hemmings had hoped to find: a knight of the road. Short and heavy-set, bearded and weathered to a light mahogany, he was dressed in ancient, badly patched jeans and what looked like a homemade hessian jacket or shirt under an open plastic raincoat. Even more appropriate, he appeared ruddy with health and just the opposite of yesterday’s victim.
Looking up as something of the great leech’s shadow fell on him, the tramp seemed momentarily surprised—not everyone felt inclined to a
pproach him this closely. And: “A very good day to you, sir!” he said in a guttural yet oddly cultured voice as he brushed crumbs from his knees, crumpled the paper bag and stuffed it into a pocket.
“Indeed it is,” Hemmings replied. “But the nights will soon be drawing in. Still, I can see that you’re a man of all weathers.”
The other nodded. “I am, though some weathers are less kind than others. But the dog will keep me warm, as I shall keep him warm, though soon I’ll have to do something about his small inhabitants.”
“Ah!” said Hemmings, reaching in his pocket. “Would a pound buy you some of the required pills or powders, perhaps?”
“Oh, indeed!” The tramp quickly, eagerly stood up.
“In which case a fiver would probably feed you for a day or two, as well?” And Hemmings proffered a five-pound note.
“Why, bless you!” The other’s hand started to tremble where it reached for the money. “You are my benefactor, sir!”
No, thought Hemmings, but you will certainly be mine!
Before the tramp’s shaky hand could take hold of the note, Hemmings said, “Ah!”—and as if by accident let it slip from his fingers. The other at once stooped to recover it.
Instantly the ex-Professor pictured an explosion of hugely intricate symbols—numbers, equations, and cabbalistic calculi—letting this seeming chaos warp momentarily on the screen of his mind, then freezing it at the required evolution: the junction between physical and metaphysical universes. And behind the stooping tramp the air rippled where a door formed in otherwise empty space.
Except for a faint shimmer the door was invisible, yet the mutant Hemmings sensed it there and leaned his bulk forward until his fat hands could grip the bowed man’s shoulders and hold him down; and as the other shrank down more yet under the great leech’s weight and magnetic influence, so the transfer ran its course.
