Brian Lumley - Necroscope - Invaders

But at a count of thirty-two he realized he was probably too close and couldn't afford to be sick. It had been his intention to stand there and shout back up the slope, remind that poor fat sod of what he'd said that night: something about Natasha feeling the last big bang? And her guts going into spasm? But there wasn't enough time left — and maybe not enough hatred left — for any of that now. Or could it be simply that he didn't want his car covered with… with whatever.

Feeling his gorge rising, but still counting, he started up the car and nosed off down the track. 'Thirty-eight, thirty-nine, forty…' And when he was on the level, heading for the motorway, he applied the brakes and looked back — felt obliged to look back — like the night when he had looked without wanting to at something else. Looked back because this was what he thought was needed to burn that memory out of him.

'Forty-six, forty-seven, forty-…' But that was as far as he got. Obviously he'd been counting just a little too slowly.

Jake saw the ball of fire leap up and out from the trees on the hillside, pictured in his mind's eye a hideous rending, and then heard the bang. The only mercy was that the fat queer himself couldn't possibly have heard it, and there had been no time at all for a spasm…

Then for a time Jake just sat there in his car, until the sweat began to turn cold on him. But damn it to hell, the horror and the hatred were already creeping back, sated for a while but by no means done with. And Jake knew that they always would be there, until he tracked down the rest of those bastards and finished what they had started.

He gave himself a shake, put the car back in gear and made for the motorway. But—

— something was obscuring his interior mirror, something that had got itself stuck to the rear window.

Something round, that once was fat but now was flat, dripping scarlet from its ripped rim. And its eyes hanging out, and its mouth still stuffed with its own underpants!

A face. But just a face!

Jesus God!

Jesus—

— God!'

Jake came "awake with a small cry and a massive start, the sweat still dripping, and that mask of a face still printed on the darkness, but fading as he realized it was only that awful nightmare again, and that while the rest of it was all too horrifyingly real, the last part had never happened except in the dream. It always happened in the dream. Every time.

But then, while he sat there trembling, his heart hammering in his chest, utterly alone in the darkness of his cubicle, someone very close quite clearly said:

Ahhhhh! What stuff you are made of, Jake! And what a host you would make! But together we'll make a very fine pair, you and I…

Jake recognized the voice at once — only this time he was awake, had been shocked awake — and the knowledge saw him fumbling for his bedside light switch with rubbery fingers, as the damp short hairs at the back of his neck stiffened into spikes.

But as the light came on, so that evil, chuckling deadspeak voice was already receding, was being driven away. Because acting instinctively — almost without knowing he had done it, and certainly without knowing how — Jake had erected mental shields against intruders, blocking them from his mind. For as well

as Korath Mindsthrall, he had sensed someone else there, and possibly many someones, listening to his thoughts.

Or was it all a bad dream? For now that they were gone, he couldn't even be sure that his intruders had ever been there in the first place. And Jake flopped, panting, back onto his pillow, wondering if perhaps it had only been a part of his dream after all. One of those dreams that crashes the barrier of consciousness, however momentarily, to cross over into the waking world.

He wondered about it, but was by no means certain…

… While just a few feet away, trying desperately hard to keep still as a mouse, Liz Merrick crouched shivering and shuddering on her bed, in the farthest corner of her cubicle, with a sheet drawn up under her chin. She hung on tightly to that sheet, and even more so to her thoughts (so as to keep them to herself, but in any case as far away from Jake as possible), and tried to forget what she had seen. But much like Jake himself that night at Castellano's place, gripped by some kind of morbid fascination, voyeurism of a sort, she'd found herself unable to look away'… until now.

Damn Ben Trask that he had ordered this surveillance! But it wasn't only Trask, for Liz, too, had 'had' to know.

Well, and now she knew. She had seen — she'd even 'experienced' Jake's passion, his hatred, and the resultant nightmare — and knew how far he would go in his vendetta, and just exactly what he was capable of (literally anything), in his craving for justice. Or for a kind of justice, at least.

But such justice!

On the other hand, perhaps that was why Harry had chosen him: because an eye for an eye had always been the Necroscope's motto. The eye, yes: that most vital and vulnerable part of the body. An eye for an eye. Why, the thought itself was horrific! But now, as Liz was witness — and as it had been brought forcefully home to her — she realized that other parts of the body could be just as vulnerable, and their use or misuse even more horrific…

Jake hadn't thought he would sleep again, but after tossing and turning for an hour — and listening, though for what he wasn't quite sure — he did in fact sleep.

And as he relaxed his shields — a natural, necessary relaxation born of mental fatigue, from listening so intently for an unidentified something — so Korath Mindsthrall was alert and waiting for him. Jake felt the ex-vampire's gradual insinuation like a slimy, creeping mist, or a damp shroud settling over his mind. But at the same time he also sensed something of urgency, a desire to speak, to communicate with him. And if for no other reason than his own curiosity, he allowed it.

'I know you're there,' Jake said, as the other's hesitancy, his too-cautious approach began to irritate him. 'So why do you hold back? If you've got something to say, get it said.'

For answer there came a sensed 'sigh' of relief, and: But I thought that you would shut me out, send me away. I thought you would reject me, Korath said.

'That didn't stop you the last time/ Jake said. 'When you spoke to me after my nightmare? You seemed to have enjoyed spying on me, as if you approved of what you had seen, of what I'd done. Or perhaps you got carried away and broke your silence in error, when I wasn't supposed to know you were there?'

was in fact… well., speaking to myself, said the other, defensively. We might even say that you eavesdropped on me!p>

'Speaking to yourself?' Jake answered. 'Deadspeak? In which case you're as new to it as I am. For a thought is just as good as the spoken word, Korath, to such as you and I.'

And to all of the teeming dead, said the other. Which makes you the odd man out.

'But as for eavesdropping…' Jake continued, 'it sometimes has its uses. What was it you said? That together we would make a very fine pair? What exactly did you mean by that? That we're alike in certain ways? No, I don't think so. Or did you perhaps mean that you'd like to team up with me?'

But that is precisely what I meant! Korath answered, just a little

too eagerly. For after all, if you're intent on tracking down and destroying the treacherous Malinari, who could possibly be of greater assistance than one who was as close to him as Korath MindsthrallP

'So close that he killed you?' Jake's sarcasm dripped.

Exactly! And I know what you are thinking: that the Necroscope Harry Keogh found it peculiar that The Mind should murder his first lieutenant out of hand, as if it were nothing to him. But it was in fact… something.