Brian Lumley - Necroscope IV - Deadspeak

The wolf struck and knocked him down, away from this awful stranger he'd thought a friend. Its fangs were at his throat, slavering there. He went to cry out, but already those terrible teeth had met through his windpipe, turning his scream to a scarlet froth that flew like a brand across a wrinkled grey brow over vengeful yellow eyes…

'You let me sleep late!' was Seth Armstrong's first reaction when he found himself prodded awake. The moon was down, the ground mist gone, the fire almost dead.

'Are you complaining?' said the man seated close by, who at first glance was George Vulpe.

'No,' Armstrong shook his head, as much to free it from sleep as in answer, 'I guess I was tuckered. Must be the altitude.'

'Good,' said the other. 'I'm glad you enjoyed your sleep. Sleep is a necessity, however wasteful. Why should we sleep when there's a life to be lived, eh? I shall not sleep again in… oh, a long time.'

Armstrong was almost awake now. 'What?' he said, and sat up. He might have jumped up, but the barrel of Gogosu's rifle was prodding him in the chest. And a lean grey wolf, lying prone on its belly like a dog, with paws stretched forward towards him, was gazing directly into his eyes! One of its ears stood stiffly erect; the other, twitching, lay close to its elongated skull. The wolf might be half-grinning, or half-snarling; whichever, its quivering muzzle was splashed with scarlet.

'Jesus H. Christ!' Armstrong snatched back his feet, which got tangled in the lower half of his sleeping-bag.

'Be still,' commanded the one he still believed was Vulpe. 'Do as you're told and he won't attack you, and I won't squeeze this trigger.'

'Geor — Geor — George!' Armstrong finally found his voice. 'That's a bloody wolf, there!'

'Bloody, yes,' said the other.

'So sh — sh — shoot the bastard!' Armstrong's face was deathly white in pale blue starshine.

'Eh?' said the seated man, cocking his head curiously on one side, for all the world as if he hadn't heard right. 'I should shoot him? I should reward an old and trusted friend by shooting him? No, I think not.' He picked up a dry branch and tossed it onto the bed of hot ashes, where small flames lingered still. Sparks showered up and the flames leaped higher, and Armstrong saw the bloodied holes in the other's clothing, his torn, rapidly mending face, the pits of hell which were his eyes.

'Christ — Christ — Christ!' the big, gangling man gasped. 'George, what the hell's happening here?'

'Be still,' the other said again, his head still tilted at an angle. For long moments he stared into Armstrong's terrified face, studying it, perhaps thinking something over. And eventually: 'You're a big man and strong, and I cannot be alone in the world. Not now, and not for some time. I have things to learn, places to go, things to do. I will need instruction. I must be taught before I may… teach? I got something from Gheorghe's mind, you see, before he honoured the covenant. But not enough. Perhaps I was too eager. It is understandable.'

'George,' Armstrong licked his lips, which were parched. 'George, listen.' He reached out a trembling hand to the other — but the old wolf's muzzle at once cracked open to display jaws like a bone vice. He lifted his belly off the earth, crept closer.

'I said be still!' said the one with the rifle, lifting it until its foresight pressed against Armstrong's bobbing Adam's apple. 'If the Grey One understands my wishes, why can't you? Or perhaps you're a fool, in which case I'm wasting my time. Is that it? Am I wasting my time? Should I be done with it, simply squeeze this trigger and make a fresh start?'

'I'll… I'll be still!' Armstrong gasped, his voice a hoarse whisper, cold sweat starting out on his brow. 'I'll be still! And… and don't worry, George. I'll help you. God, yes, whatever bug you've picked up, I'll help you!'

'Oh, I know you will,' said this — this stranger? — still staring from his crimson eyes.

'I'll do anything you say,' said Armstrong. 'Anything at all.'

'Yes, that too,' said the other, nodding. And having made up his mind: 'Very well, and shall we start with something simple? Look into my eyes, Seth Armstrong.' He moved the barrel of the rifle aside to lean closer, until his terrible mesmeric face was only a foot away. 'Look deep, Seth. Look under the skin of my eyes, into the blood and the brains and the very landscape of my mind. The eyes are the windows of the soul, my friend, did you know that? Portals on one's dreams and passions and aspirations. Which is why my eyes are red. Aye, for the soul behind them has been torn asunder arid eaten by a scarlet leech!'

His words conjured seething horror, but more than that they inspired awe, a creeping paralysis, a lassitude of terror. Armstrong knew what it was: hypnotism! He could feel his mind going under. But Vulpe — or whoever this was in Vulpe's body — had been right: Seth Armstrong was strong. And before his will could be subverted utterly -

— He batted the rifle aside, so that it was directed at the wolf, and reached for the throat of his tormentor. Tm going to have me… a piece of… you, George!' he panted.

As the Texan's fingers closed on Vulpe's windpipe, so that facsimile gave a grunting cry and clawed at his face. The three fingers of his left hand hooked in the corner of Armstrong's lower lip, tearing it. Armstrong howled his pain, bit down hard on the smallest of Vulpe's fingers, severed it at the central knuckle in the moment before the other dragged his hand free.

The rifle went off, its flash startling and the crack of its discharge reverberating from the peaks. The great wolf knew something about guns; unharmed, fur bristling, still he whined and backed away.

Gurgling and clutching at his damaged hand, Vulpe had reared to his feet. Armstrong spat out Vulpe's little finger, which hung from his mouth on a thread of blood and gristle. The Texan now had possession of the rifle and knew how to use it. But even as he tried to turn the weapon on the madman, so Vulpe recovered and kicked it from his hands.

Somehow Armstrong burst free of his sleeping-bag, but as he lurched to his feet he felt something clinging to his face and moving there. And shaking with laughter, the mad thing which had been George Vulpe pointed at Armstrong — at his face. He pointed with his freakish left hand, where all that remained of the third finger was now a bloody stump.

The Texan put up a hand and slapped at the finger on his cheek, clawed at it. It climbed higher, with a life of its own, and gouged at the corner of his right eye. Armstrong howled as it dug in, dislodged the eyeball and entered the socket. With his eye hanging on his cheek, he danced and screamed and clutched at his face; but he couldn't dislodge the thing, which burrowed like an alien worm into his head.

' Jesus God!' he screamed, falling to his knees and tearing at the rim of the empty orbit. And: 'J-J-Jesus G-G-God!' he gurgled again as he ripped the flopping eye loose and vampire flesh put out exploratory tendrils into his brain.

On his knees, he shuffled spastically, blindly towards the fire, and shuddered to a halt. He coughed and shuddered again, and toppled forward like a felled tree.

But the Vulpe-anomaly stepped forward, caught his collar with its good hand and swung him to one side, turning him onto his back. 'Ah, no, Seth!' the thing said, standing over him. 'Enough is enough. For if you burn it will take time in the healing, and I would be up and gone from here.'

'Ge-o-o-orge!' the other coughed and gagged.

'No, no, my friend, no more of that,' said the monster, smiling hideously. 'From now on you must call me Janos!'

More than five and a half years later; the balcony of a hotel room in Rhodes, overlooking a noisy, jostling, early-morning street only a stone's throw from the harbour; salty-sweet air breezing in across the sea from Turkey, thinning out the clouds of blue exhaust smoke, the pungent miasma of the bakeries, the many odours of the breakfast bars, refuse collectors and humanity in general in this, the nerve-centre of the ancient Greek port.