The Last Aerie

by Brian Lumley

  “They were what?” Trask brushed past the others and into the morgue. “Alive?”

  Nathan followed him into the large, cold square room and looked all about. But there was nothing to see. No steel caskets, no filing cabinets or corpses, nothing. Nothing to see or feel at all, except the cold. Garvey, shivering uncontrollably and looking into the room over Geoff Smart’s shoulder, said, “I saw what I saw, and then … I didn’t!”

  Trask grunted and said, “It’s started. And earlier than ever before.” Then, glancing out into the corridor at Smart: “Do you feel anything?”

  The empath’s eyes were wide, his red brush of a crewcut seeming more than ever erect. “The same as I felt last time,” he said. “Only stronger, much stronger. I feel mounting fear, horror—”

  “The Great Majority,” Nathan broke in. “I can feel them, too. Their terror.”

  “And I feel … a monstrous anger!” Smart finished.

  Trask said, “That’ll be John.” And turning to Nathan, with some urgency: “Son, I think maybe you’d better start doing your stuff right now. The sooner you can make contact—if you can make contact—the better.”

  The air was colder still, and the temperature still falling. Nathan’s breath plumed as he answered, “I’ll bring a chair from the other room. Then I’ll ask you to leave me alone. If I need you, I’ll call. But right now I would prefer to be alone. You’re all espers. If you can feel something of the dead, then maybe they can feel something of you. Since it bothers them to talk to me, your presence can only make it that much more difficult. Also, I need to concentrate.”

  He headed for the corridor but Trask stopped him. “I’ll go and get your chair. You stay here, and try to contact … them. Here, take my overcoat. The rest of us, we’ll take turns out in the corridor.”

  After he had left, Nathan asked Geoff Smart, “What did you do last time?”

  “What we always do: we tried to contain it. I can’t say how much good we did, but we used whatever psychic powers were available in us to suppress the thing. I’m an empath: I used my talent to calm the atmosphere of the place, the unquiet spirits which were at work in it … to calm John Scofield, I suppose. Telepaths do the same: try to talk the thing down, with their minds. The others do whatever they can. As for Ben, he’s good for moral support. In matters like this Ben’s a rock that we all lean on.”

  “Wouldn’t it be better if the whole team, E-Branch in its entirety, were here to contain it?”

  Smart’s face was white in the frame of the doorway. “The truth of the matter is,” he said, “that we simply can’t afford it. If matters got out of hand—if it got lethal—this way we know that only four of us pay the price. The survival of the Branch is paramount.”

  Nathan frowned. “Yet you let the head of the Branch risk his neck?”

  Smart grinned, however humourlessly. “Have you ever tried arguing with him? I’m not going to be the one who tells him to go home. Nathan, this man stood side by side with your father against vampires—even against Wamphyri! Now that might not be such a big deal in your world, but in this one …”

  Trask was back with a metal-framed chair. Nathan took it to the centre of the room, sat down, and drew Trask’s overcoat tighter round his shoulders. The cold seemed to have receded a little, but he drew the overcoat to him anyway. Out in the corridor, Smart took first watch while Trask and Garvey went back to the duty room.

  And there in the heart of the Nightmare Zone, Nathan collapsed his shield of alien numbers and opened his mind, hoping that the Great Majority would sense him there not as a thing to be feared but as their friend. And then that he would be heard and heeded by all the teeming dead …

  5

  Dead Voices

  It was a tumult of distant, only half-discernible whispers, a babbie—a Babel?—but of crumbling autumn leaves skittering over the stone flags of Nathan’s mind. The psychic ether seethed with them: like the static hiss issuing from a coastguard’s radio as he listens for Mayday messages on a stormy night. Except these whispers were that message: the terrified SOS of the teeming dead. Not sent out to the Necroscope but to each other—tike the hoarse, questioning whispers of frightened children trapped in a dark place—which Nathan overheard because he had a walkie-talkie, his deadspeak, but couldn’t answer because they were too afraid to switch their set to receive.

  He fine-tuned his talent to listen to these tumultuous spirit voices, which would scare any other man half to death, if any other were able to hear them at all. But Nathan Kiklu, or Keogh as it now transpired, had listened to voices such as these all of his life, from childhood. And he knew that their owners were harmless … mainly. He also knew, however, that to interrupt would be to silence them, causing them to withdraw as from a leper.

  It was the legacy of his father, come down to him in two worlds. For in the end Harry had been a monster, and the dead of both worlds had feared him. Or rather, they had feared his necromantic talents. Likewise they feared Nathan, and at any other time must surely have detected him by now, but their circumstances were such that his presence had passed by unnoticed.

  So the Great Majority continued to voice their fears in the unending night of death, and Nathan listened in, trying to decipher their deadspeak whispers and uncertain as to his best course of action. And yet if he was to help them, help himself and his new found E-Branch friends, he must break in, must attempt to establish some kind of contact, at least. Perhaps by now Sir Keenan Gormley had found the time to talk to them. There was only one way to find out, and the sooner the better.

  Nathan cast about with his metaphysical mind, discovering nearby presences in the ether of the beyond. These could only be people who had died close by, perhaps in the hospital overhead, whose spirits yet attached to this place. He would make his first overtures to them; of all the dead, they were surely the closest to the Nightmare Zone.

  In this, despite that he’d been born with his talent, Nathan showed his inexperience, his immaturity as a Necroscope. For he was already aware of others who had died even closer to this place, which he nevertheless failed to take into account as he concentrated his deadspeak thoughts directly into the ether. And whispering so quietly that only he himself could hear it, he said:

  “Whoever you are, I need your help. I need you to help me now, so that I can help you later. My name is Nathan, and I’m … alive.”

  WHAT? WHO? NATHAN? … LIAR!

  It was like the shout of a giant or some furious madman in Nathan’s mind, causing him to start to his feet. But of course he was the only one who heard it, and out in the corridor Geoff Smart wasn’t even looking. The empath’s talent wasn’t automatic but must be induced, like a kind of self-hypnotism. Living with his own thoughts and emotions for the moment, he wasn’t much concerned with anyone else’s. And anyway, midnight was still a long way off. Smart leaned against a wall and lit a cigarette.

  But in the morgue:

  The temperature had dropped again, plummeted, and Nathan’s breath plumed as before. And again the short hairs on the back of his neck stood erect as he took slow, careful steps towards the open doors. For he could actually feel the presence there in the room with him, and knew that its powers were awesome as his own. But where his were harmless, its could only be—

  —Devastating!

  STOP! The command brought him up short, panting. It was as if he were back in Turgosheim beyond the Great Red Waste, in Runemanse, and the Seer Lord Maglore of the Wamphyri had spoken to him; such had been the force of that single word. But still it had not dawned on him who issued it. And:

  “Who are you?” he whispered.

  YOU KNOW ME. AND I KNOW YOU—TOD PRENTISSSS! The last word sounded in Nathan’s mind as a protracted hiss, filled with menace, loathing. And now indeed he knew who the presence was.

  “John Scofield!”

  And another voice, half-wondering, asked, “What?”

  It was Geoff Smart, silhouetted like a wraith in his own cigarette smoke and a
swirling, luminous mist just beyond the heavy steel doors, drawing deeply on his smoke and rubbing his hands together briskly, then more slowly, as he stared at Nathan where once more he inched towards the corridor. But now the empath knew that something was wrong, and reached out a tentative mental probe towards Nathan’s aura … A mistake!

  WHAT? DO YOU HAVE FRIENDS HERE? AND YOU THINK THEY CAN HELP YOU? THINK AGAIN, TOD PRENTISSSS!

  Smart couldn’t hear Scofield’s words but instead felt them—like hammer blows to his psyche, rocking him on his heels—as the steel doors to the morgue slammed shut in his face. And: “Nathan!” he found breath to yell. “Nathan!” But Nathan was on the other side of the doors.

  Trask and Garvey came running. The telepath was more composed now, but the left side of his face was alive with jerks and twitches as his nerves continued to play him up a little. “What now?” Trask’s voice was hoarse with dread.

  “Nathan’s in there,” Smart gasped. “But he isn’t alone. There’s something—someone—in there with him. It has to be John Scofield.”

  Trask tried the doors. “Locked.”

  “Impossible.” Garvey shook his head. “I opened them, and I still have the keys.” Then he realized what he’d said. Nothing was impossible here, for this was the Nightmare Zone.

  “Give me the keys,” Trask told him, and a moment later he had a key in the lock. But as he tried to turn it …

  It was as if a cold, invisible, iron-hard hand yanked his own hand aside—and snapped off the key in the lock! And the key ring fell jangling to the floor. Down there, streaming out from a crack under the door, a faintly luminous mist began to lap about their feet, causing them to move uneasily, as if they stood in ice-cold water.

  Then Garvey said, “He’s talking to someone. I can sense it, feel it, but I can’t hear it. It isn’t telepathy but deadspeak.”

  “Well, that’s what he’s in there for,” Trask rasped. “But we’re not supposed to be locked out here. Telekinesis locked this door. And yes, it has to be John Scofield. He’s early this time. Nathan must have brought him on.” And turning to Smart: “Take the keys. Go round to the side of the hospital. Maybe you’ll find a key that will open a door. If not, then break something, a window, door, anything. But get into the hospital and down to the morgue.”

  As Smart raced off back along the corridor and out of sight, Trask took Garvey’s elbow. “Come on. Don’t I recall seeing a bench back there in the inquiries room? One of those old-fashioned oak benches that weigh half a ton? It will make one hell of a battering ram!”

  They ran down the mist-wreathed corridor, leaving Nathan alone in the morgue with the unquiet spirit of John Scofield. For the moment, it was as much as they could do …

  In the morgue, Nathan began to see things. He knew that they weren’t there, but just like Garvey before him he saw them. The triple-stacked container unit with its rows of sliding, refrigerated cabinets; the filing system in a corner recess; a pair of medical trolleys with white rubber sheets thrown over them. A scene from the past, brought into being by the flux of John Scofield’s dead thoughts. For a ghost doesn’t have to be revenant of sentience; it can also be of a place, an object, a thing other than human, other than once-alive. In this sense the phantasmal items Nathan saw were ghosts, but ghosts of the morgue itself, not its inhabitants.

  That was only what he saw, however, while what he heard and felt …

  … Those things were quite different.

  For as the steel doors had slammed shut, closing Nathan in and condemning him to darkness, then the presence of John Scofield had loomed that much larger, until it could be felt everywhere about. And even as Nathan realized his predicament, so the dead madman’s voice came back again, so powerful as to be painful in the echoing caverns of the Necroscope’s mind:

  TOD PRENTISS … PRENTISS … PRENTISSSS!

  “Wrong!” Nathan whispered. “I’m not Tod Prentiss. My name is Nathan. It’s Nathan … Keogh.” Keogh, yes! Let Scofield know who he was, how he could speak to the dead. Let them all know that he was the son of the first true Necroscope. Surely there were friends other than Sir Keenan Gormley out there?

  KEOGH? KEOGH! KEOOOOGH—

  NECROSCOPE! And for the first time Scofield’s demented deadspeak voice contained something other than malice and madness. So that Nathan pressed his momentary advantage:

  “Nathan Keogh, yes. I’m the son of Harry Keogh, and your friends in E-Branch have asked me to help you. They couldn’t reach you but I can. And I’m the only one who can. That’s why you have to listen to me.

  Thickening, the poltergeist mist had taken on a lot more of weird luminosity; sufficient now to light the entire morgue with an eerie blue fox fire. And the morgue really was a morgue. Its contents appeared real now; not wavering, insubstantial, and half opaque, but solid as life. John Scofield’s hatred made it real, as his enhanced telekinetic powers prepared the killing ground for a new assault upon his dead enemy.

  NATHAN KEOOOOGH … His deadspeak voice breathed again —breathed the mist, which swirled about the room and filled its corners, bringing them to glowing life. And: NO, YOU WOULD TRY TO TRICK ME, the voice continued. IF YOU ARE KEOGH, YOU WOULD DEPRIVE ME OF MY PREY. AND IF YOU ARE NOT KEOGH, THEN YOU ARE PRENTISSSS! TOD PRENTISS, YESSSS, AND YOU ARE AFRAID OF DYING … AGAIN! NOW LET ME THINK. HOW HAVE I KILLED YOU? IN HOW MANY WAYS?

  “I’m Keogh,” Nathan insisted. “Nathan Keogh. How else am I talking to you, if not in deadspeak? Who else but a Necroscope could do it?”

  THE DEAD CAN DO IT. ANY ONE OF THEM CAN. BUT YOU KNOW THAT, DON’T YOU, PRENTISS? FOR YOU ARE DEAD, AND WOULD REMAIN DEAD—EXCEPT I DRIVE YOU BACK INTO A SEMBLANCE OF LIFE SO THAT I MAY KILL YOU YET AGAIN. AS INDEED I INTEND TO KILL YOU YET AGAIN!

  Feeling the dreadful intensity of Scofield’s obsession—his paranoia, which would not be denied by anything as simple as the truth—Nathan opened his deadspeak channels wider yet. Now he must enlist the aid of the Great Majority, for his was only one voice and theirs were many. If he could only persuade them to talk to him, perhaps he could convince Scofield of his truth. His thoughts were deadspeak, of course, and the madman had heard them.

  OH, CLEVER, SO CLEVER! BUT YOU WERE CLEVER IN LIFE, TOO, ELSE YOU WOULD NEVER HAVE LASTED SO LONG. BUT TELL ME THIS: IF YOU ARE IN “TRUTH” THE NECROSCOPE, THEN WHY DON’T THE DEAD TALK BACK TO YOU? OR ARE THEY SAVING THAT FOR LATER—THEIR “TRUMP CARD”—WHEN EVERYTHING ELSE FAILS? THE ONLY THING THAT PUZZLES ME IS WHY THEY SHOULD CONCERN THEMSELVES WITH YOU AT ALL!

  “And what about you?” Nathan found courage to answer. “Don’t you care about the Great Majority?” His words went out to all the dead now. “Are you so unfeeling of them? Don’t you know how you’re harming them, how much damage you can do? And not only to the dead but to the living? You mentioned a trump card. But would you play the ‘last trump,’ John?” Nathan had watched an E-Branch duty Officer playing patience one night; he knew what cards were, and he’d learned the meaning of “the last trump” the first time he spoke to Keenan Gormley, for deadspeak often conveys more than is actually said.

  WHAT ARE YOU SAYING? And again there was other than madness in the great voice. MY ARGUMENT IS WITH YOU, TOD PRENTISS. IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE TEEMING DEAD—UNLESS THEY WOULD DENY ME MY REVENGE. AND CERTAINLY IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE LIVING. THE LAST TRUMP? TO CALL UP THE DEAD? BUT SURELY THAT’S YOUR PROVINCE, ‘NECROSCOPE’!

  The voice was caustic, full of sarcasm.

  “And yours.” Nathan was growing desperate, and still the dead ignored him. Or if not that—if they were beginning to listen to him now—listening was all they were doing. “It’s your province, too. For you’re the one who calls up Tod Prentiss out of death, to make him pay for what he did to you and yours. Well, and perhaps you have the right, but why must all of the dead suffer? And what of the living?”

  TRICKERY! Scofield bellowed. WORD GAMES! MIND GAMES! BUT I WON’T PLAY THEM WITH YOU. YOU ARE GOING TO DIE—AGAIN AND AGAIN AND
AGAIN, TOD PRENTISSSS!

  Word games …

  Well, in a sense Scofield was right: it was a word game of sorts, and Nathan was good at them. The Mage of Runemanse himself had admitted as much. But this time … so much depended on the game that Nathan must use every word to maximum effect. And so he fell silent, to consider his next move.

  The air in the morgue was freezing now, and it throbbed almost audibly with a barely contained power that galvanized Nathan’s hair into electrical life and raised gooseflesh on his arms and back. It was at least five and a half hours to midnight, and for all of that time the power would be building. Surely it couldn’t be contained. Not in one room. Not by one man.

  Meanwhile, he had inched his way slowly to the doors and now tried them. Useless; there was no give in them; they might as well be welded shut. And tendrils of blue-glowing mist were seeking him out, creeping across the floor and weaving through the bitterly cold air to where his breath plumed frosty white. While starting up again in his head:

  HOW MANY TIMES HAVE I KILLED YOU, TOD PRENTISS? NOT ENOUGH, NOT NEARLY ENOUGH. AND IN HOW MANY WAYS? I HAVE CUT YOUR THROAT WITH A RAZOR. BUT … HAVE I BURNED YOU? NO. I’VE DRIVEN NAILS INTO YOUR EYES, YOUR BRAIN. BUT HAVE I CRUSHED YOUR SKULL WITH MY TELEKINESIS, OH SO SLOWLY, UNTIL BRAIN FLUIDS TRICKLE FROM YOUR EARS LIKE THE YOLKS OF EGGS? NO. I’VE GELDED YOU WITH A WHITE HOT POKER, DRIVING IT INTO THE STEAMING RAW HOLE OF WHAT WAS YOUR SEX. BUT HAVE I DROWNED YOU IN BLOOD … ?

  NOT YET!

  Putting his shoulder to the doors and leaning his weight on them—like shoving at the face of a granite cliff, without moving it the smallest fraction of an inch—Nathan felt the mist damp around his ankles; damp and mobile … and yet glutinous, too.

  Gluey …

  He looked down—