Brian Lumley - Necroscope

That was his idea of nightmare: the knowledge of sly intelligence where none should be. Just as it should not be here…

'Ah!' said the voice, stronger now. 'Ah! — so you are one of mine! And because you are one of mine, you came here. Because you knew where to find me…'

It was then that Boris knew he was conscious and that the voice in his head was real! And its evil was the slimy touch of a toad, the leaping of crickets in darkness, the slow tick of a hated clock, which seems to talk to you in the night and chuckle at your fears and your insomnia. Oh, and it was much worse than that, he was sure — except he didn't have the words or knowledge or experience to describe it.

But he could picture the mouth which spoke those guttural, clotted, sly and insinuating words in his head. And he knew why it was clotted and gurgling. In his mind's eye the picture was vivid and monstrous: the mouth dripped blood like liquid rubies, and its gleaming incisors were pointed as those of a great hound!

'What… is your name, boy?'

'Dragosani,' Boris answered, or at least thought the answer, for his throat was too dry for speech. In any case, it was enough. 'Ahhhh! Dragosani!' The voice was a hoarse sigh now, like autumn leaves skittering on cobbles. A sigh of dawning r ealisation, of understanding, of satisfaction.' Then indeed you are one of mine. But alas, too small, too small! You have not the strength, boy. A child, a mere child. What can you do for me? Nothing! Your blood runs like water your veins. It has no iron…'

Boris sat up, stared frightenedly about in the gloom, his darting and his head reeling. He was more than half- down the hillside on a sort of flat ledge of rock beneath the trees. He had never been here before, never guessed the place existed. Then, as his eyes became more accustomed to the gloom and his senses returned to him more fully, he saw that in fact he sat upon lichen-clad stone flags before what could only be-A mausoleum! Boris had seen the like before; his uncle (at least, his S ister-father's brother) had died a month ago and had been interred in just such a place; but that had been in holy ground, in the churchyard in Slatina. This place, on lithe other hand… . this was not a holy place. No, not by any stretch of the imagination…

Unseen presence's moved here, stirring the musty air without stirring the festoons of cobwebs and fingers of dead twigs that hung down from above. Here it was cold — clammy cold — where the sun had not broken through for five hundred years.

Behind Boris, hewn from a great outcrop of rock, the — tomb itself had long since caved in, its roof of massive slabs lying in a tangle of masonry. In his hurtling rush from above, Boris must have flown over that jumble of stone, or doubtless he'd have brained himself. Perhaps he had anyway, for certainly he was feeling and hearing things where there was nothing to be felt or heard. Or where there should not be anything.

He pricked up his ears and squinted his eyes in the dusk of this enclosed place, but… there was nothing.

Boris tried to stand up, managed it on his third attempt. He leaned his trembling weight on a sloping slab which had once formed the front lintel of the tomb's door. Then he listened and looked again, straining ears and eyes in the gloom. But no voice now, no mouth dripping blood in the mirror of his mind. He sighed his relief, his breath rasping in his throat.

A thickly matted crust of dirt, lichens and pine needles fell away from the slab beneath his hands, partly revealing a motif or coat of arms. Boris cleared away more of the grime of centuries, and —

He snatched away his hands at once, reeled back, tripped and sat down again, gasping. The arms had consisted of a shield bearing in bas-relief a dragon, one forepaw raised in threat; and riding upon its back, a bat with triangular eyes of carnelian; and surmounting both of these figures, the leering horned head of the devil himself, forked tongue protruding and dripping gouts of carnelian blood!

All three symbols — dragon, bat, devil — now came together in Boris's mind. They became amalgamated as the author of the voice in his head. The voice which chose that precise moment of time to speak to him yet again:

'Run, little man, run… begone from here. You are too small, too young, too innocent, and I am far too weak and oh so very old…'

On legs that trembled so fearfully he was sure he would fall, Boris stood up, backed away. Then he turned and fled the place full tilt — away from the pine-needle-strewn flagstones, which the gnarled roots of centuries were push ing upward; away from the tumbled tomb and whatever

buried secrets it contained; away from the gloom of the place, so menacing as to seem to have physical substance.

And as he went — under the dark, uncut trees and down the steep hillside, torn by whipping branches and bruised from fall after fall, so the voice chuckled in his mind like a file on glass or chalk on a blackboard, obscene in its ancient knowledge. 'Aye, run — run! But never forget me, Dragosani. And be sure I shall not forget you. No, for I shall wait for you while you grow strong. And when your blood has iron in it and you know what you do — for it must be of your own free will, Dragosani — then we shall see. And now I must sleep…'

Bursting from the trees at the foot of the hill, bounding a low fence where the top bar was broken down, Boris flew forward into long grass and thistles, and blessed, blessed light! But even then he did not pause, but scrambled to his feet and ran for home. Only in the middle of the field, with no breath left in him to carry him on, did he stop, collapse to the earth, turn his face and look back at the looming hills. Away in the west the sun was setting, its last lances of fire turning the topmost pines to gold; but Boris knew that in the secret place, the tree-shrouded glade of the tomb, all was clammy and crawly and dark with dread. And only then did he think to ask:

'What… who… who are you?'

And as if from a million miles away — carried on the evening breeze, which has blown over the hills and fields of Transylvania since remembered time began — the answer came to him in the back of his mind:

'Aaahhh! — but you know that, Dragosani. You know that. Ask not "who are you" but "who am I". But what does it matter? The answer is the same. I am your past, Dragosani. And you… are.. my… fuuutuuure!'

'Herr Dragosani?' 'What… who… who are you?' Repeating his question from the dream, Dragosani came awake. Eyes gazed at him, almost triangular, unblinking, searing in the unexpected gloom of the room; so that for a moment, a single second, he almost fancied himself back in the glade of the tomb. But they were green eyes, like a cat's. Dragosani stared at them and they stared back, unabashed. They were framed by a white face in an oval of raven-black hair. A female face.

He sat up, stretched, swung his feet down to the floor. The owner of the eyes curtsied peasant fashion — inelegantly, Dragosani thought. He sneered at her. Rising from sleep, he was always testy; waking before his time, as by an intrusion, like now, he was especially so.

'Are you deaf?' he stretched again, pointed directly at her nose. 'I said who are you? Also, why have I been allowed to sleep so late?' (He could also be contrary.)

His rigidly pointing finger didn't seem to impress her at all. She smiled, one eyebrow arching delicately, almost insolently. Tm Use, Herr Dragosani. Use Kinkovsi. You've been asleep for three hours. Since you were obviously very tired, my father said I should leave you sleeping and prepare your room in the garret. That has been done.'