by Brian Lumley
The sound repeated in Harry’s head, reverberating, metamorphosing from a slam to a knock, to a series of knocks, repeating:
Rat-tat-tat! Rat-tat-tat!
“You have to go,” said his mother. “Be careful, Harry. Poor little Harry.…”
He jerked awake in his flat. From the slant of the sunlight through the window, he knew that time turned towards evening. He’d slept for three hours at least; more than he’d intended. He started as the knock came again at the door:
Rat-tat-tat!
Who could this be? Brenda? No, for he wasn’t expecting her.
Although it was a Saturday she was putting in some overtime, dolling up the hair of some of Harden’s more “fashionable” ladies. Who, then?
Rat-tat-tat! Insistently.
Stiffly, Harry swung his legs off the bed, stood up and went to the door. His hair was tousled, his eyes full of sleep. Visitors were rare and he liked it that way. This was an intrusion, something to be dealt with swiftly and decisively. He zipped up his trousers, shrugged into a shirt—and the knock came yet again.
Outside the door, Sir Keenan Gormley waited, knowing that Harry Keogh was in there. He had known it coming down the street, had felt it climbing the stairs. Keogh’s ESP signature was written in the very air of the place as unmistakably as a fingerprint on clear glass. For like Viktor Shukshin and Gregor Borowitz, this was Gormley’s one great talent: he too was a “spotter,” he instinctively “knew” when he stood in the presence of an ESPer, and Keogh’s ESP-aura was more powerful than any he had ever sensed before, so that he felt he was close to some great generator as he stood there at the door on the landing at the head of the stairs.
And now Harry Keogh himself opened that door.…
Gormley had seen Keogh before, but never so close. Over the last three weeks, while he had been staying with Jack Harmon, he’d seen him often. Gormley and Harmon, following Keogh on occasion, had kept the youth under close but discreet observation; likewise on the two occasions when George Hannant had accompanied them. And Gormley had not taken long to agree with both Harmon and Hannant that indeed Keogh was something special. Quite obviously they were correct about him; he was a Necroscope; he did have the power of intelligent intercourse with the dead. Gormley had given Keogh’s weird talent a lot of thought over the last three weeks. It was one which he would dearly love to have under his control. Now he must somehow find a way to put that idea to Keogh.
Blinking the sleep from his eyes, Harry Keogh looked his visitor up and down. He had intended to be brusque no matter who it was, to deal with the problem and be done with it, but one look at Gormley had told him this was something which wasn’t going to go away. There was a quiet air of unassuming but awesome intellect about this man, and coupled with his charming smile and demanding, outstretched hand, it formed a combination which was totally disarming.
“Harry Keogh?” said Gormley, knowing of course that it was Keogh and insisting that the other take his hand by shoving it even farther forward. “I’m Sir Keenan Gormley. You won’t have heard of me but I know quite a bit about you. In fact—why, I know just about everything about you!”
The landing was ill-lit and Harry couldn’t quite make out the other’s features, just indistinct impressions. Finally, briefly, he took Gormley’s hand, then stepped aside and let him in. The contact, however brief, had told him a lot. Gormley’s hand had been firm and yet resilient, cool but honest; it had promised nothing, but neither had it threatened. It was the hand of someone who could be a friend. Except—
“You know everything about me?” Harry wasn’t sure he liked the sound of that. “Well, that won’t come to much. There’s not a lot to know.”
“Oh, I disagree with you,” said the other. “You’re far too modest.”
Now, in the brighter light from the windows, Keogh looked at his visitor more closely. His age could be anything between fifty and sixty, but probably at the top end; his green eyes were a little muddied and his skin full of small wrinkles; his well-groomed hair was grey on a large, high-domed head. About five-ten in height, his well-tailored jacket just failed to hide slightly rounded shoulders. Sir Keenan Gormley had seen better days, but Harry Keogh would think he had a way to go yet.
“What do I call you?” he said. It was the first time he’d spoken to a “Sir.”
“Keenan will do, since we’re to be friends.”
“You’re sure of that? That we’re to be friends, I mean? I must warn you I don’t make many.”
“I don’t think we have any choice,” Gormley smiled. “We have too much in common. Anyway, the way I hear it you have lots of friends.”
“Then you’ve heard it wrong,” Harry frowned, shook his head. “I can count my real friends on one hand.”
Gormley believed he might as well get straight to the point. And anyway, he wanted to see Keogh’s reaction if he was caught off balance. It might just provide the final ounce of proof. “Those are the live ones,” he quietly answered, easing the smile gradually off his face. “But I think the others are rather more numerous.…”
It hit Harry like a grenade. He’d often wondered how he would feel if anyone should ever confront him like this, and now he knew. He felt ill.
He reeled, found a rickety easy chair, sank down into it. Pale as death he shivered, gulped, gazed at Gormley through the eyes of a cornered animal. “I don’t know what you’re—” he finally began to croak his denial, only to have Gormley cut him off with:
“Yes you do, Harry! You know very well what I’m talking about. You’re a Necroscope. And you’re probably the only real Necroscope in the entire world!”
“You have to be crazy!” Harry gasped desperately. “Coming in here and accusing me of … of things. A Necroscope? There’s no such thing. Everyone knows you can’t … can’t.…” Trapped, he faltered to a halt.
“Can’t what, Harry? Talk to the dead? But you can, can’t you?”
Clammy sweat broke out on Harry’s forehead. He gasped for air. He was caught and he knew it. Trapped like a ghoul with a dripping heart in his hands, like a rapist in the beam of a policeman’s torch, gasping between his battered victim’s thighs. It hadn’t felt like a crime before—he’d never hurt anyone—but now.…
Gormley stepped forward, took his shoulders, shook him where he sat. “Snap out of it, man! You look like a grubby little boy caught masturbating. You’re not sick, Harry—this thing you do isn’t an illness—it’s a talent!”
“It’s a secret thing,” he protested weakly, his face shining. “I … I don’t hurt them, I wouldn’t do that. Without me, who would they have to talk to? They’re so lonely!” He was almost babbling now, convinced that he was in deep trouble and trying to talk his way out.
The last thing Gormley wanted was to alienate him. “It’s okay, son, it’s okay. Take it easy—no one’s accusing you of anything.”
“But it’s a secret thing!” Harry insisted, gritting his teeth, growing angry now. “Or at least it was. But now, if people know about it—”
“They won’t get to know.”
“You know!”
“It’s my business to know these things. Son, I keep telling you, you’re not in trouble. Not with me.”
He was so persuasive, so quiet. Was he a friend, a real friend, or was he something else? Harry couldn’t control his panic, the shock of knowing that someone else knew. His head whirled. Could he trust this man? Dared he trust anyone? And if Gormley meant the end of him as a Necroscope, what of his revenge on Viktor Shukshin? Nothing must interfere with that!
He reached out desperately with his mind, contacted a confidence trickster he knew in the cemetery in Easington.
Gormley felt the power that washed out from Harry at that moment, a raw alien energy like nothing he’d felt before, which set his scalp tingling and quickened his heart alarmingly. This was it! This was the Necroscope’s talent in action. Gormley knew it as surely as he was born.
In his chair Harry had gradually squee
zed himself into a more compact mass, hunching down. He had been the colour of drifted snow, dripping sweat like a faulty tap. But now—
He sat up, bared his teeth and grinned a wild grin, tossed back his head and sent beads of sweat flying. He uncoiled like a spring, all of the panic going out of him in a moment. His hand hardly trembled at all as he brushed damp hair back from his forehead. Colour rapidly returned to his face. “That’s it,” he said, still grinning. “Interview’s over.”
“What?” Gormley was amazed at the transformation.
“Certainly. That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? You came here to find out about Harry Keogh the author. Someone mentioned to you the theme of a new story I’m writing—which no one’s supposed to know about incidentally—and you just hit me with it to get my reaction. It’s a horror story, and you’ve heard I always act out what I write. So when I act out the part of the Necroscope—which is a word of my own coining, by the way—naturally I do it with authority. I’m a good actor, see? Well, you’ve had your free show and I’ve had my fun, and now the interview’s over.” The grin fell abruptly from his face and left it sour, sneering. “You know where the door is, Keenan.…”
Gormley slowly shook his head. At first he’d been stunned, but now his instinct took over. And it was his instinct that told him what was happening here. “That’s clever,” he said, “but nowhere close to clever enough. Who are you talking to now, Harry? Or rather, who is it talking through you?”
For a moment defiance continued to shine in Harry Keogh’s eyes, but then Gormley once more felt the flow of weird energies as the youth broke the link with his clever, dead, unknown friend. His face visibly changed; sarcasm drained away and Harry was himself again; but at least he retained something of composure. His panic had passed.
“What do you want to know?” he said, his voice flat and emotionless.
“Everything,” Gormley answered at once.
“I thought you already knew everything? You said you did.”
“But I want to hear it from you. I know you can’t explain how you do it, and I certainly don’t want to know why; it’s enough to say that you found yourself with a talent you could use to improve your own life. That’s understandable. No, it’s the facts I want. The extent of your talent, for instance, and its limitations. Until a moment ago I didn’t know you could use it at a distance—that, sort of thing I want to know what you talk about, what interests them. Do they see you as an intruder, or do they welcome you? Like I said: I want to know everything.”
“Or else?”
Gormley shook his head. “That doesn’t even come into it—not yet.”
Harry gave a sour smile, “So we’re to be ‘friends,’ are we?”
Gormley drew up a chair and sat down facing him. “Harry, no one else is going to know about you. That’s a promise. And yes, we are going to be friends. That’s because we need each other, and because we in turn are needed. Okay, you probably think you don’t need me, that I’m the last thing you need! But that’s only for now. You will need me, I assure you.”
Harry looked at him through narrowed eyes. “And just why do you need me? I think, before I tell you anything—before I even admit anything—that there are one or two things you’d better tell me.”
Gormley had expected nothing less. He nodded, stared straight into the other’s wary, questioning eyes, drew a deep breath. “Fair enough, I will. You know who I am, so now I’ll tell you what I am and what I do for a living. More importantly, I’ll tell you about the people I work with.”
He did. He told Harry about the British E-Branch, and what little he knew about the American, French, Russian and Chinese equivalents. He told him about telepaths who could speak to each other across the world without a telephone, with their minds alone; about precognition, the ability to pierce the future and tell of events yet to happen; about telekinesis and psychokinesis, and men who could move solid objects with their will alone and without resorting to simple physical strength. He spoke about “farseeing,” and about a man he knew who could tell you what was happening anywhere in the world at this precise moment of time; about psychic healing and a “doctor” who could conjure the supreme power of Life into his naked hands, banishing diseases without the benefit of any form of conventional treatment; about the entire range of ESPers under his command, and how there was a place there, too, for Harry. And he told it all in such a way—with such understanding and clarity and conviction—that Harry knew he spoke the truth.
“So you see,” Gormley finally came to a close, “you’re not a freak, Harry. Your talent may well be unique but you, as an ESPer, are not. Your grandmother was one before you and passed it down to your mother. She in turn passed a large dose of it down to you. God only knows what your children will be capable of, Harry Keogh!”
After a long while and as all he had been told sank in, Harry said: “And now you want me to work for you?”
“In a nutshell, yes.”
“What if I refuse?”
“Harry, I found you. I’m a spotter; I have no real ESP talent myself but I can spot an ESPer a mile away. I suppose that in itself is a talent, but that’s all I have. The one thing I know for sure is that there are others like me. One of them is the boss of the Russian branch. Now I’ve come to you and put my cards on the table. I’ve told you things I didn’t even have the right to tell you. That’s because I want you to trust me, and also because I think I can trust you. You’ve nothing to fear from me, Harry … but I can’t promise the same for the other side!”
“You mean … they might find me too?”
“They get cleverer all the time, Harry,” Gormley shrugged, “just as we do. They have at least one man in England. I’ve not met him, but I’ve sensed him close to me. I know he was looking at me, watching me. He’s probably a spotter, too. What I’m saying is this: I found you, so how long before they do? The difference is this: with them you’ll not get a choice.”
“And with you I have a choice, right?”
“Of course you do. It’s entirely in your hands. You join us or you don’t join us. That’s your choice. So take your time, Harry, and think about it. But not for too long. Like I said, we need you. The sooner the better.…”
Harry thought about Viktor Shukshin. He couldn’t know it, but Shukshin was the man Gormley had “sensed” watching him. “There are things I have to do first,” he said, “before making any final decision.”
“Of course, I can understand that.”
“It may take some time. Maybe five months?”
Gormley nodded. “If it has to be.”
“I think it has to be, yes.” For the first time Harry smiled his natural, shy smile. “Hey, I’m dry! Would you like a coffee?”
“Very much,” Gormley smiled back. “And while we drink it maybe you’d like to tell me about yourself, eh?”
Harry felt a great weight lifted from his shoulders. “Yes,” he sighed. “I think maybe I would.”
* * *
It was a fortnight later that Harry Keogh finished his novel and “went into training” for Viktor Shukshin. An advance on the book gave him the financial stability he would need for the next five or six months, until the job was done.
His first step was to join a group of crazy, all-weather swimming enthusiasts who made a habit of bathing in the North Sea at least twice a week all the year round—including Christmas and New Year’s Day! They had something of a reputation for breaking the ice on Harden’s reservoir to do charity plunges for the British Heart Foundation. Brenda, a level-headed girl on any other subject except Harry himself, thought he was crazy, of course.
“It’s fine in the summer, Harry,” he remembered her telling him one late August evening as they had lain naked in each other’s arms in his flat, “but what about when it starts to get cold? I can’t see you breaking the ice to go for a swim! What is this swimming craze, anyway?”
“It’s just a way of staying fit and healthy,” he had told her, kissing
her breasts. “Don’t you like me healthy?”
“Sometimes,” she had answered, turning more fully towards him as he grew hard again in her hand, “I think you’re far too healthy!”
In fact she had been happier than at any time in more than three years. Harry was much more open now, less given to brooding, more lively and exciting. Nor was his sudden interest in sports confined to swimming. He’d also taken up self-defence and joined a small Hartlepool Judo club. After only a week his coach there had been calling him a “natural” and telling him he expected big things of him. He hadn’t known, of course, that Harry had another coach … a man who had once been the Judo champion of his regiment, who now had nothing better to do than pass on all his expertise to Harry.
But as for Harry’s swimming:
He’d always considered himself a fair swimmer; now it appeared that was all he had been. At first the rest of the group were way in front of him—at least until he found himself an ex-Olympic silver medallist who had died in an automobile accident in 1960, a fact recorded on his headstone in Stockton’s St. Mary’s graveyard. Harry was enthusiastically received (his plan with reservations) and his new friend joined in the fun and games with great aplomb.
Even with this sort of advantage, however, there was still the physical side to overcome. Harry might let the professional swimmer’s mind guide his technique, but it couldn’t help with his lack of muscle; only practice could do that. Nevertheless his progress was rapid.
By September the craze was underwater swimming: that is, seeing just how long he could stay underwater on one breath, and how far he could swim before surfacing. The first time he did two complete lengths of the pool submerged was a red-letter day for Harry; everyone in the place had stopped swimming to watch him. That was at the swimming baths at Seaton Carew, where afterwards an attendant had sidled up to ask him his secret. Harry had shrugged and answered:
