Brian Lumley - Necroscope IV - Deadspeak

Bettley felt a tingling in his spine. 'But you were a Necroscope — the Necroscope — and read it out of your dead mother's mind. Surely?'

Harry shook his head. 'No, because it was a dream I had from a time long before I first consciously talked to the dead. And in it I "remembered" something I couldn't possibly remember. It was a talent I'd had without even recognizing it. You know my mother was a psychic medium, and her mother, too? Maybe it was something that came down from them. But as my greater talent — as a Necroscope — developed, so this other thing was pushed into the background, got lost.'

'And you think all of this has something to do with this new dream of yours? In what way?'

Harry's shrug was lighter, no longer defeatist. 'You know how when someone goes blind he seems to develop a sixth sense? And people handicapped from birth, how they seem to make up for their deficiencies in other ways?'

'Of course,' the doctor answered. 'Some of the greatest musicians the world's ever seen have been deaf or blind. But what…?' And then he snapped his fingers. 'I see! So you think that the loss of your other talents has caused this… this atrophied one to start growing again, is that it?'

'Maybe,' Harry nodded, 'maybe. Except I'm not just seeing things from the past any more but from the future. My future. But vaguely, unformed except as nightmares.'

It was Bettley's turn to frown. 'A precog, is that what you think you're becoming? But what has this to do with vampires, Harry?'

'It was my dream,' the other answered. 'Something I'd forgotten, or hadn't wanted to remember, until you brought it back to me. But now I remember it clearly. I can see it clearly.'

'Go on.'

'It's just a little thing,' Harry shrugged again, perhaps defensively.

'But best if we have it out in the open, right?' Bettley spoke quietly, clearing the way for Harry without openly urging him on.

'Perhaps.' And in a sudden rush of words: 'I saw red threads! The scarlet life-threads of vampires!'

'In your dream?' Bettley shivered as gooseflesh crept on his back and forearms. 'Where in your dream?'

'In the green stripes where the light came through the blinds,' Harry answered. 'The stripes on her belly and thighs, in the moment before that hellish thing fastened on me. They were green-tinted, almost submarine, but as my blood began to spurt they turned red. Red stripes streaming off her body into the dim past, and also into the future. Writhing red threads among the blue life-threads of humanity. Vampires!'

The doctor said nothing, waited, felt the other's horror — and fascination — washing out from him, welling into the study like a sick, almost tangible flood tide. Until Harry shook his head and cut off the flow. Then, abruptly, he stood up and headed a little unsteadily for the door.

'Harry?' Bettley called after him.

At the door Harry turned. 'I'm wasting your time,' he said. 'As usual. Let's face it, you could be right and I'm frightened of my own shadow. Self-pity, because I'm nothing special any more. And maybe scared because I know what could be out there waiting for me, but ' probably isn't. But what the hell — what will be will be, we know that. And the time is long past when I could do anything about it or change any part of it.'

Bettley shook his head in denial. 'It wasn't a waste, Harry, not if we got something out of it. And it seems to me we got a lot out of it.'

The other nodded. 'Thanks anyway,' he said, and closed the door behind him. The doctor got up and moved to his window. Shortly, down below, Harry left the building and stepped out into Princes Street in the heart of Edinburgh. He turned up his coat collar against the squalling rain, tucked his chin in and angled his back to the bluster, then stepped to the kerb and hailed a taxi. A moment later and the car had whirled him away.

Bettley returned to his desk, sat down and sighed. Now he was the one who felt weak; but Keogh's psychic essence — a near-tangible 'echo' of his presence — was already fading. When it had faded into nothing, the empath rewound his interview tape and dialled a special number at INTESP HQ in London. He waited until he got a signal, then placed the handset into a cradle on the tape machine under his desk. At the press of a button, Harry's interview began playing itself into storage at E-Branch.

Along with all of his other interviews…

In the back of the taxi on the way to Bonnyrig, Harry relaxed and closed his eyes, leaned his head against the seat and tried to recall something of that other dream which had bothered him on and off for the last three or four years, the one about Harry Jnr. He knew what the dream was in essence — what had been done to him, how and why — but its fine detail eluded him. The what and how part was obvious: by use of the Wamphyri art of fascination, hypnotism, Harry Jnr had made his father an ex-Necroscope, at the same time removing or cancelling his ability to enter and manoeuvre in the Möbius Continuum. As to why he'd done it:

You would destroy me if you could, he heard his son's voice again, like a record played a hundred times, until he knew every word and phrase, every mood and emotion or lack of it, by heart. Don't deny it, for I can see it in your eyes, smell it on your breath, read it in your mind. I know your mind well, father. Almost as well as you do. I've explored every part of it, remember?

And now, under his breath, Harry answered again as he'd answered then: 'But if you know that much, then you know I'd never harm you. I don't want to destroy you, only to cure you.'

As you "cured" the Lady Karen? And where is she now, father? It hadn't been an accusation; there'd been no sarcasm in it, no sourness; it was just a statement of fact. For the Lady Karen had killed herself, which Harry Jnr knew well enough.

'The thing had taken too strong a hold on her,' Harry had insisted. 'Also, she'd been a peasant, a Traveller, without your understanding. She couldn't see what she'd gained, only what she thought she'd lost. She didn't have to kill herself. Maybe she was… unbalanced?'

You know she wasn't. She was simply Wamphyri. And you drove her vampire out and killed it. You thought it would be like killing a tapeworm, like lancing a boil or curing out a cancer. But it wasn't. You say she couldn't see what she'd gained. Now tell me, father, what you think the Lady Karen had gained?

'Her freedom!' Harry had cried in desperation, and in sudden horror of himself. 'For God's sake, don't prove me wrong in what I did! I'm no bloody murderer!'

No, you're not. But you are a man with an obsession. And I'm afraid of you. Or if not afraid of you, afraid of your goals, your ambitions. You want a world — your world-free of vampirism. An entirely admirable objective. But when you've achieved that aim… what then? Will my world be next? An obsession, yes, which seems to be growing in you even as my vampire is growing in me. I'm Wamphyri now, father, and there's nothing so tenacious as a vampire — unless it's Harry Keogh himself!

Can't you see how dangerous you are to me? You know many of the secret arts of the Wamphyri, and how to destroy them; you can talk to the dead, travel in the Möbius Continuum — even in time itself, however ephemerally. I ran away from you, from your world, once. But now, in this world, I've fought for my territories and earned them. They're mine now and I'll not desert them. I'll run no more. But I can't take the chance that you won't come after me, daren't accept the risk that you won't be satisfied. I'm Wamphyri! I'll not suffer your experiments. I'll not be a guinea pig for any more "cures" you might come up with.

'And what of me?' Harry had spoken up then, even as he now whispered the words to himself. 'How safe will I be? I'm a threat to you, you've admitted as much. How long before your vampire is ascendant and you come looking for me?'