Brian Lumley - Necroscope IV - Deadspeak

'Nice to see you again, Miss Markham,' Wellesley nodded, taking a seat.

Clarke was less formal. 'How are things, Sandra?' He forced a smile.

She caught a brief glimpse of his mind and it was all worry and uncertainty. But nothing specific. Harry was in it somewhere, though, be sure. Of course he was; why else would these two be here? She said: 'Coffee?' and without waiting for their answer went into her kitchen alcove. Let them do the talking.

'We have time for a coffee, yes,' said Wellesley, in that oh-very-well, I-suppose-I-shall-have-to-accept way of his, as if it were his damned right! 'But actually we're pretty busy and won't prolong our visit too much. So if we can get right to it: did you have plans to see Keogh tonight?'

Just like that… and 'Keogh', not Harry. Will you be in his bed, or he in yours? Wellesley was asking. Humping again tonight, are you?

There was something about this man that got Sandra's back up. And the fact that his mind was a complete blank — not even radiating the faintest glow — was only a small part of it. She glanced back at him from the alcove with eyes that were cold where they met his. 'He said he might call me,' she answered, unemotionally.

'It's just that we'd prefer it if you don't see him tonight, Sandra,' Clarke hurriedly put in, before Wellesley could use that blunt instrument he called a tongue again. 'I mean, we plan on seeing him ourselves. And we'd like to avoid, you know, any embarrassing confrontations?'

She didn't know, really. But she brought them their coffee anyway and gave Darcy a smile. She'd always liked him. She didn't like to see him uncomfortable in the presence of his boss. Their boss, though not for much longer. Not if things worked out as she hoped they would. 'I see,' she said. 'So what's happening?'

'No need for you to concern yourself,' Wellesley was quick off the mark. 'Just routine stuff. And, I'm afraid, confidential.'

And suddenly she was afraid, too… for Harry. More complications? Something to interfere with her own plans, which she hoped would be the best for him? It was on the tip of her tongue to tell them about the new developments, what she knew of them, but she held it back.

There was that in their attitude — Wellesley's anyway — which warned that now wasn't a good time. And anyway, it would all go in her end-of-month report, along with her resignation.

They all three finished their coffees in silence. And finally: 'That's it, then,' said Wellesley, standing up. 'We won't be seeing you!' — his idea of a smart remark! He nodded, offered her a twitchy half-smile and headed for the door. She saw them out, and Wellesley's parting shot was: 'So if he does, er, call you, do put him off, won't you?'

She might have answered him in kind right there and then, but Clarke gave her arm a reassuring squeeze just above the elbow, as if saying: 'It's OK, I'll be there.'

But why should Darcy be acting so concerned? She'd rarely seen him looking so on edge…

After dropping Sandra off in Bonnyrig and during the short drive home, Harry stopped at a newsagent's and bought himself a pack of twenty cigarettes. He looked at his change but didn't try to check it. It wouldn't make any sense to him anyway. They could rip him off every time and he just wouldn't know it.

That was the other thing Harry Jnr had done to him: he was now innumerate. No way he could use the Möbius Continuum if he couldn't even calculate the change from a pack of cigarettes! Sandra saw to it that his bills were paid, or he'd probably get that wrong, too. What price his 'instinctive mathematics' now, eh? The Möbius equations? What the hell were they? What had they looked like?

And again Harry wondered: was it a dream? Was that all it had been? A fantasy? A figment of his own imagination? Oh, he remembered how it had been, all right; but as he'd tried to explain to Sandra, it was the way you remember a dream, or a book you read in childhood, fast fading now. Had he really, really, done all of those things? And if he had, did he really, really, want to be able to do them again? To talk to the teeming dead, and step through doors no one else guessed existed to travel swift as thought in the metaphysical Möbius Continuum?

Want it? Perhaps not, but what was there without it? What was he without it? Answer: Harry Keogh, nowhere man.

Back home he went into the garden and looked at the stones again:

KENL

TJOR

RH

They meant nothing to him. But still he fixed their meaningless legend in his mind. Then he brought the wheelbarrow, loaded it up and wheeled the stones back to the wall where… he paused a moment and stood frowning, before wheeling them back up to the lawn again. And there he left them, in the wheelbarrow.

For if — just if — someone was trying to tell him something, well, why make things harder for them?

Indoors again, Harry climbed stairs and then ladders to the attic room which no one else suspected was there — that large, dusty room with its sloping rear window, naked light-bulb hanging from a roof timber, and its rows and rows of bookshelves — which was now a shrine to his obsession, if the word 'shrine' were at all applicable. And of course the books themselves. All the facts and the fictions were here, all the myths and legends, all the 'conclusive condemnations' and 'indisputable evidences' for or against, proving, disproving or standing in the middle ground of Harry's studies. The history, the lore, the very nature… of the vampire.

Which was in itself a grim joke, for how could anyone ever fully understand the nature of the vampire? And yet if any man could, then it was Harry Keogh.

But he hadn't come here today to look again at his books or delve a little deeper into the miasma of times, lands and legends long past. No, for he believed that time itself was well past for those things, for study and vain attempts at understanding. His dreams of red threads among the blue were immediate things, 'now' things, and if he'd learned nothing else in his weird life it was to trust in his dreams.

The Wamphyri have powers, father!

An echo? A whisper? The scurry of mice? Or… a memory?

How long before they seek you out and find you?

No, he wasn't here to look at his books this time. The time to study an enemy's tactics is before the onslaught. Too late if he's already come a-knocking at your door. Well, he hadn't, not yet. But Harry had dreamed things, and he trusted his dreams.

He took down a piece of modern weaponry (yes, modern, though its design hadn't changed much through sixteen centuries) from the wall and carried it to a table where he laid it down on newspapers preparatory to cleaning, oiling and generally servicing the thing. There was this, and in the corner there a sickle whose semicircular blade gleamed like a razor, and that was all.

Strange weapons, these, against a force for blight and plague and devastation potentially greater than any of Man's thermonuclear toys. But right now they were the only weapons Harry had.

Better tend to them…

The afternoon passed without incident; why shouldn't it? Years had passed without incident, within the parameters of the Harry Keogh mentality and identity. He spent most of the time considering his position (which was this: that he was no longer a Necroscope, that he no longer had access to the Möbius Continuum), and ways in which he might improve that position and recover his talents before they atrophied utterly.

It was possible — barely, Harry supposed, considering his innumeracy — that if he could speak to Möbius, then Möbius might be able to stabilize whatever mathematical gyro was now out of kilter in his head. Except first he must be able to speak to him, which was likewise out of the question. For of course Möbius had been dead for well over a hundred years, and Harry was forbidden to speak to the dead on penalty of mental agony.