Brian Lumley - Necroscope IV - Deadspeak

Careful where he stepped through the inches-deep ground mist, Laverne followed Vulpe's exact route, passed through the same gap in the wall and moved deeper into the ruins. They were extensive, covering almost an acre if one took into account those walls which had fallen or been blasted outwards. Away from the sleepers and the firelight, he switched on a pocket torch and aimed its beam ahead. The ground rose up a little here, where heaps of tumbled stones stood higher than the lapping mist, like islands in some strange white sea.

In the torch beam, caught in the moment before he passed behind a shattered wall, George Vulpe paused briefly and looked back. His eyes seemed huge as lanterns, reflecting the electric light. George's eyes… and the eyes of something else!

They were there only for a single moment, then gone, blinking out like lights switched off. A pair of eyes, low to the ground, triangular, feral… A wolf?

Laverne swung his beam wildly, aimed it this way and that, crouched down a little and turned in a complete circle. He saw nothing, just ragged walls, mounds of stones, empty archways and inky darkness beyond. And a little way to the rear, the friendly glow of the campfire like a pharos in the night.

They'd made a wise choice not to start exploring this place in the twilight; it was just too big, its condition too dangerous; and maybe Laverne had been mistaken to leave the others sleeping.

But… a wolf? Or just his imagination? A fox, more likely. This would be the ideal spot for foxes. There'd be room for dens galore in the caves of these ruins. And hadn't Gogosu mentioned how the locals wouldn't shoot or hunt the foxes who raided from up here? Yes, he had. So that's what it had been, then, a fox…

… Or a wolf.

Laverne had a pocketknife with a three-inch blade; he took it out, opened it up and weighed it in his hand. Great for opening letters, peeling apples or whittling wood! But in any case better than nothing. Christ! — why hadn't he shaken the others awake? But too late for that now, and meanwhile George was getting away from him.

'George!' he whispered, following on. 'George, for Chrissakes! Where the hell are you?'

Laverne reached the corner of crumbling wall where Vulpe had disappeared. Beyond it lay a large area silvered by moonlight, which might once have been a great hall. On the far side, behind a jumble of broken masonry and shattered roof slates, the silhouette of a man stood outlined from the waist up. Laverne recognized the figure as George Vulpe. Even as he watched, it took a step forward and down in that stiff, robotic way, until only the head and shoulders were showing. Then another step, and the head might be a round boulder atop the pile; another, and Vulpe had vanished from sight.

Into what? A hole or half-choked stairwell? Where did the idiot think he was going? How did he know where he was going? 'George!' Laverne called again, a little louder this time; and again he went in pursuit.

Beyond the pile of rubble, there where a small area of debris had been cleared away down to the original stone flags of the floor, a hole gaped blackly, descending into the bowels of the place. At one end of the hole or stairwell a long, narrow, pivoting slab had been raised by means of an iron ring and now leaned slightly out of the perpendicular away from the space it had covered. Laverne flashed his torch into the gap, saw stone steps descending. Carried on a stale-tasting updraught came a whiff of something burning mingled with musk and less easily identified odours; glimpsed in the darkness down below, the merest flicker of yellow light, immediately disappearing into the unknown depths.

The paunchy young American paused for a brief moment, but the mystery was such that he had to follow it up. 'George?' he said again, his whisper a croak as he squeezed down into the hole.

After that… it was easy to lose track of time, direction, one's entire orientation. Moreover, the pressure spring in Laverne's torch had lost some of its tension; battery contact was weak, which resulted in a poor beam of light that came and went; so that every so often he must give the torch a nervous shake to restore its power.

The stone steps were narrow and descended spirally, winding round a central core which was solid enough in itself. But outwards from the spiral all was darkness and echoing space, and Laverne hated to think how far he might fall if he slipped or stumbled. He made sure he did neither. But how would George Vulpe be faring, sleepwalking in a place like this? If he was sleepwalking.

Finally a floor was reached, with evidence of a fire or explosion on every hand in the shape of scorched and blackened walls and fallen blocks of carved masonry; and here a second trapdoor slab; then more steps leading down, ever down…

Occasionally Laverne would see the flaring of a torch — a real torch — down below at some undetermined depth, or smell its smoke drifting up to him. But never a sound from Vulpe, who must know this place extremely well to negotiate its hazards so cleanly and silently. How he could possibly know it so well was a different matter. But Laverne felt his anger rising commensurate to the depths into which he descended. Surely he and Seth Armstrong were the victims of a huge joke, in which Gogosu was possibly a participant no less than Vulpe? Ever since last night when they'd met the old hunter it had been as if this entire venture were pre-ordained, worked out in advance. By whom? And hadn't George been born here? Hadn't he lived here — or if not here exactly, then somewhere in Romania?

And finally Vulpe's descent into the black guts of this place, when he thought the others were asleep… what little 'surprise' was he planning now? And why go to such elaborate lengths anyway? If he'd known of this place and been here before — as a boy, perhaps — couldn't he have let them in on it? It wouldn't have been any the less fascinating for that.

'The Castle Ferenczy!' Laverne snorted now to himself. 'Shit!' And how many leu had Vulpe coughed up, he wondered, to get old Gogosu to play his part in this farce?

Very angry now he stepped down onto a second floor where he paused to call out more loudly yet: 'George! What the fuck are you up to, eh!?'

His cry disturbed the air, brought down rills of dust from unseen heights and ceilings. As its echoes boomed out and came back distorted and discordant, Laverne nervously explored the place with the smoky, jittery beam of his torch.

He was in the vaults, the place of frescoed walls, many archways, centuries-blackened oaken racks, urns and amphorae, festoons of cobwebs and layers of drifted dust. And there were footprints in the dust, quite a few of them. The most recent of these could only be Vulpe's. Laverne followed the direction they took — and ahead caught a glimpse of flaring torchlight where it lit the curve of an archway before disappearing.

You bastard! Laverne thought. You'd have to be deaf not to know I'm back here! You've got a hell of a lot of explaining to do, good buddy! And if I don't like what you have to -

From above and behind, on the stone stairs where they wound up into darkness, there came the soft pad of feet and a softer whining. A pebble, disturbed, came clattering down the steps. Then all was silence again.

Shaking like a leaf, suddenly cold and clammy, Laverne aimed his torch up the stairwell. 'Jesus!' he gasped. 'Jesus!' But there was nothing and no one there. Or perhaps a shadow, drawing back out of sight?

Laverne stumbled across the stone-flagged floor of the great room, through an archway and into other rooms beyond it. His ragged breathing and muffled footfalls seemed to echo thunderously but he made no effort to be silent. He must shorten the distance between Vulpe and himself right now and find out exactly what the bastard was doing down here. The glow of Vulpe's torch came again, and the resinous stench of its burning; Laverne plunged in that direction, through drifts of dust, salts and chemicals where they lay spilled on the floor, until…