Brian Lumley - Necroscope V - Deadspawn

But for how long, son? I mean, will she age? Will she die? What will she be? What will she be, Harry?!

He had no answer. 'Just a girl. I don't know.'

And her children? What will they be?

'Ma, I don't know! I only know she's too much alive to be dead.'

Are you doing it for… yourself?

'No, just for her, and for all of you.'

He sensed her shaking her head. I don't know, son. I just don't know.

Trust me, Ma.'

Well, I suppose I'll have to. So how can I help?

Harry was eager now, except: 'Ma, I don't want to weaken you. You said you were all used up.'

So I am, but if you can fight so can I. If the dead won't talk to you, maybe they'll still talk to me. While they can.

He nodded his gratitude and in a little while said: 'There were others before Penny Sanderson. I know their names from the newspapers, but I have to know where they were laid to rest and I need an introduction. See, they were badly hurt and probably won't trust someone like me, who can touch them from this side. I mean, the one who killed them, he could do that, too. While I do need to talk to them, I don't want to frighten them more than they already are. So you see, without you it would be just too difficult.'

So you want to know which graveyards they're in, right?

'Right. It probably wouldn't be too hard to find out for myself, but there are so many things on my mind that keep getting in the way. And so time goes by.'

All right, Harry, I'll do what I can. But I don't want to have to track you down any more, so it would be better if you came to see me. That way I… She paused, cut off abruptly.

'Ma?'

Didn't you feel that, son? I always feel it, when they're close by like that.

'What was it?'

Someone joining us, she answered, sadly. Someone dying. Some thing, anyway.

A medium in life, in death Mary Keogh's contact with death was that much sharper. But what had she meant? It wasn't clear, and Harry felt the short hairs prickle on the back of his neck. 'Some… thing?' he repeated her.

A pet, a puppy, an accident, she sighed. And some poor child's heart broken. In Bonnyrig. Just this minute.

The Necroscope felt his own heart give a start; he'd lost so much during his life that the thought of another's loss, however small, stung him with its poignancy. Or maybe it was just the way his mother had reported the occurrence, so soulfully. Or there again it could be an effect of his heightened emotional awareness. Maybe there was someone he could comfort.

'Bonnyrig, did you say? Ma, I'll be going now. I'll come and see you tomorrow. Maybe you'll know something by then.'

Take care, son.

Harry stood up, looked up and down the river and across it to the other side. The bright sun had passed behind fluffy, drifting clouds, which was a relief.

He climbed a tottering fence and entered a small copse, and in the dappled heart of the greenery conjured a Möbius door. A moment later and he emerged in a back alley close to the high street in Bonnyrig. And letting his deadspeak sensitivity spread out around him like a fan or cobweb, he searched for a newcomer among the ranks of the dead.

And there it was, close by: a whining yelp in memory of the panic and pain of a few moments ago, and a certain astonishment that the pain was no longer here, and disbelief that the bright day could so quickly turn black and blacker than night. A dumb animal's perception of sudden death.

Harry understood it very well, for it wasn't too dissimilar to the reaction of a human being. The only difference being that dogs have neither foreknowledge of nor preoccupation with death, so that their surprise is that much greater. But strike or kick a dog unjustly or cruelly and it will draw back with just the same astonishment, the same disbelief.

Taking a chance that he wasn't observed, the Necroscope used the Möbius Continuum to follow the pup's thoughts to their source: a kerbside in the main village street, at a junction where the street turned left on to the main road into Edinburgh. A workday, there weren't many people about; the handful which had gathered had their backs to Harry anyway where he emerged on to the pavement as if from thin air. And the first thing he saw was the long, dark skidmark burned into the road's surface.

The pup's deadspeak thoughts were more desperate now as it realized that it couldn't extricate itself from this new predicament. There was no feeling, no contact, no light. Where was its God, its young master?

Shh! Harry hushed. It's OK, boy! It's all right! Shh!

He moved to the forefront of the handful of onlookers, saw a young boy kneeling there in the gutter, his cheeks shiny with tears, the broken pup dead in his arms. One of the pup's shoulders was askew and its spine kinked; its right foreleg flopped like a rubber band; its crushed head oozed brain fluid from a torn right ear.

Harry got down on one knee, put an arm round the boy and stroked the dead pet. And again: 'Shh, boy!' He comforted both of them. And in his mind the pup's whines and yelps quietened to a panting whimper. It could feel again. It felt Harry.

But the boy couldn't be comforted. 'He's dead!' he kept moaning. 'He's dead! Paddy's dead! Why didn't the car hit me and not Paddy? Why didn't the car stop?'

'Where do you live, son?' Harry asked the boy, a towhead of maybe eight or nine.

The other glanced at him through blurred-blue eyes. 'Down there.' He nodded vaguely over his right shoulder. 'Number seven. We live there, Paddy and me.'

Harry took the dog gently into his arms and stood up. 'Let's get him home then,' he said.

The crowd parted for them and Harry heard someone say, 'It's a shame. What a terrible shame!'

'Paddy's dead!' The kid clutched the Necroscope's elbow as they turned the corner into a narrow, deserted street.

Dead? Yes, he was, but… did he really have to be? You don't have to be, do you, Paddy?

The deadspeak answer which came back wasn't quite a bark and it wasn't quite a word — but it was an agreement. A dog will usually agree with his friends, and rarely if ever disagree with his master. While Harry wasn't Paddy's beloved master, he certainly was a new friend.

And the decision was made as quickly as that.

Before they reached the small garden in front of number seven, Harry looked down at the lad and said: 'What's your name, son?'

'Peter.' The other could scarcely get it out past his tears and the lump in his throat.

'Peter, I — ' Harry jerked to a halt. Play-acting for all he was worth, he glanced at the pet in his arms. ' — I think I felt him move!'

The boy's mouth fell open. 'Paddy moved? But he's so bad hurt!'

'Son, I'm a vet,' Harry lied. 'Maybe I can save him. You run quickly now and tell your people what's happened, and I'll take Paddy to the surgery. And whatever happens, I'll be in touch just as soon as I know how bad he is — or how good. OK?'

'But — '

'Don't waste time, Peter,' Harry urged. 'It's Paddy's life, right?'

The other gulped, nodded once, flew to the gate of number seven and through it, and as he vanished pell-mell into the garden Harry conjured a Möbius door. By the time Peter's Ma came out of the house wringing her hands — came flying to see the vet — Harry was at a different address entirely…

The Necroscope had perhaps too few friends among the living, but one of them was an old potter up in the Pentlands who fired his own kilns. Paddy was absolutely dead, no doubt about that, when Harry handed him over to Hamish McCulloch for calcination in one of his ovens. 'It's worth a twenty to me, Hamish,' he told the old Scot, 'if you can bring him down to ashes. Well, if not to me, to his master, a young lad with a broken heart. And I'll pay you for one of your pots, too, to keep him in.'