Brian Lumley - Necroscope V - Deadspawn

The sky was overcast and he stood on the bank of the river with his coat collar turned up against a thin but penetrating, persistent drizzle. 'Any success, Ma?'

Harry? Is that you, son? Her deadspeak was so thin, so far-off sounding, that for a moment the Necroscope thought it was simply background 'static', the whispers of the teeming dead conversing in their graves.

'It's me, Ma, yes. But… you're awfully faint.'

I know, son, she answered from afar. Just like you, I don't have a lot of time now. Not here, anyway. It's all fading now, everything… Did you want something, Harry?

She seemed very weary and wandering. 'Ma,' (he was patient with her, just like in the old days), 'since I've been having some difficulty with the dead, we'd decided that you would help me out and see if they'd be a bit more forthcoming with you… about those poor murdered girls, I mean. You said I should give you a little time, then come and see you again. So here I am. I still need that information, Ma.'

Murdered girls? She repeated him, however vaguely. But then Harry sensed the sudden focusing of her attention as her deadspeak sounded sharper in his unique mind. Of course, those poor murdered girls! Those innocents. Except… well, they weren't all innocents, Harry.

'In my book they were, Ma. For my purposes, they were. But tell me, what do you mean?'

Well, most of them wouldn't speak to me, she answered. It seemed they'd been warned off, warned about you. When it comes to vampires, the dead aren't very forgiving, Harry. The one who would speak to me, she'd been one of the first of his victims — whoever he is — but by no means an innocent. She was a prostitute, son, foul-mouthed and foul-minded. But she was willing to talk about it and said she wouldn't mind talking to you. In fact, she said more than that.

'Oh?'

Yes, she said that it would make a nice change to just… to just talk to a man! Harry's Ma tut-tutted. And so young, so very young.

'Ma,' said Harry, 'I'm going to go and see that one — soon. But you're getting so faint that I don't know if we'll ever get to talk again. So I just thought I'd tell you right now that you've been the best mother anyone could ever have, and…'

— And you've been the best son, Harry, she cut him off. But listen, don't you cry for me. And I promise I won't cry for you. I lived a good life, son, and despite a cruel death I've not been too unhappy in my grave. You were responsible for what happiness I found, Harry, just as you've been for so much of what passes for happiness in this place. That the dead no longer trust you… well, that's their loss.

He blew her a kiss. 'I missed a lot when you were taken from me. But of course, you missed a lot more. I hope there is a place beyond death, Ma, and that you make it there.'

Harry, there's something else. She was fading very quickly now, so that he must give her all of his attention or lose her deadspeak entirely. About August Ferdinand.

'August Ferdi — ? About Möbius?' Harry remembered his last conversation with the great mathematician. 'Ah!' He chewed his lip. 'Well, it could be that I insulted Möbius, Ma… inadvertently, you understand? I mean, I wasn't quite myself that time.'

He said you weren't, son, and that he wouldn't be speaking with you again.

'Oh,' said Harry, a little crestfallen. Möbius had been one of his very best and closest friends. 'I see.'

No, you don't see, Harry, his mother contradicted him. He won't be speaking to you because he won't be there… I mean here. He, too, has somewhere else to go, or believes he has. Anyway, he talked about a lot of things I didn't much understand: space and time, space-time, the cone-shaped universes of light? I think that covers everything. And he said your argument left one big question unanswered.

'Oh?'

Yes. The question of the… ius Continuum itself. He said… thinks… knows what it is. He said… was… mind… She was breaking up, her deadspeak scattering, for the last time, Harry knew.

'Ma?' He was anxious.

Möbius… said… was… The Mind, Harry…

'The Mind? Ma, did you say The Mind?'

She tried to answer but couldn't quite make it. All that came back was the faintest of all far-distant, fading whispers.

Haarrry… Haaarrrry…

Then silence.

Paxton had read the Necroscope's case-files and knew quite a lot about him. Most of it would seem unbelievable, to people of entirely mundane persuasions. But of course Paxton wasn't one of them. On the far bank of the river, he watched Harry through a pair of binoculars and thought: The strange sod's talking to his mother, a woman dead for quarter of a century and long since turned to slop! Jesus! And they say telepathy is weird!

Harry 'heard' him and knew that he'd been eavesdropping on his conversation with his mother; on Harry's part of it, anyway. And suddenly he was furious, but coldly furious, not like the other night. And again Faéthor's words of advice sprang to memory: 'He would enter your mind. Enter his!'

Paxton saw the Necroscope step behind a bush and waited for him to come out on the other side. But he didn't. Taking a leak? the esper wondered.

'Actually, no,' said Harry softly, from directly behind him. 'But when I do I'd like to think it's in private.'

'Who — ?' The mindspy whirled about, stumbled, staggered on the very rim of the river. Harry reached out easily and caught the front of his jacket, steadied him, grinned an utterly mirthless grin at him. He looked him up and down: a small, thin, withered-looking stick of a man in his middle to late twenties, with the face and eyes of a weasel. His telepathy must be Old Ma Nature's way of making up for several sorts of deficiency.

'Paxton,' Harry said, his voice still dangerously soft, a hot breath squeezed out of burning bellows lungs, 'you're a scum-sucking little mind-flea. I reckon that when your father made you the best part leaked from a ruptured rubber down your Ma's leg onto the floor of the brothel. You're a scumbag bastard who has invaded my territory, stepped on my toes and is making me itch. And I have every right to do something about you. Don't you agree?'

Paxton flapped his mouth like a landed fish, finally got his breath and his nerve back. 'I… I'm doing my job, that's all,' he gasped, trying to free himself from Harry's grip. But the Necroscope just held him there at arm's length — held him that much tighter — with no real expenditure of energy at all.

'Doing your job?' He repeated Paxton's words. 'Who for, scumbag?'

'That's none of your busin — ' Paxton started to say.

Harry shook him, glared at him, and for the first time the esper noticed a flush of red light colouring the Necroscope's gaunt cheeks where it escaped from behind the thick lenses of his dark glasses. An angry red light — from his eyes!

'For E-Branch?' Harry's voice was lower still, a rumble, almost a growl.

'Yes — no!' Paxton blurted the words out. Soft as jelly, all he wanted now was to get away from here; to that end he'd say anything at all, the first thing that came to mind. Harry knew it, could read it in his pale face and trembling lips; but where lips may lie the mind usually tells the truth. He went inside, scanned it all and more, and got out again like squelching from the sucking quag of a sewer. Even through the acrid odour of Paxton's fear, still he'd been able to smell the shit.

It was a relief to know that such minds were in the minority; otherwise the Necroscope might be tempted to declare war on the entire human race, right now!

But Paxton knew he'd been in: he'd felt Harry in there, like slivers of ice in his mind. He started imitating a fish again.