Brian Lumley - Necroscope IV - Deadspeak

He shook his head. 'Not once. My eyes held her entirely in thrall. She knew only what I wanted her to know, did only as I instructed her to do.'

'And you caused her to think that you were me,' I growled, 'so that she would hold nothing back!' And I went to grab him.

In that same moment the dog had read my mind. Until then I had kept it shielded from him, but as the thought of him and Marilena together returned to plague me all grip was lost. He saw my thoughts, my intentions, avoided my grasp and lunged at me with his spear.

I was on the rim of the cliff; I ducked to one side and his weapon tore my robe and grazed my shoulder; I wrenched it from him and knocked him in the face with it. His mouth was torn and his teeth broken in. Also, he jerked away from me and slammed his head against the cave's ceiling. And as he collapsed I caught him up. Dazed, he could do nothing as I carried him to the sheer rim. His head lolled a little but his eyes were open, watching me as I gave way to the vampire within to let its fury shape and reshape my face and form!

'So,' I grunted then, meshing my teeth where they came bursting through the ripped ridges of my jaws. 'So, and you would be Wamphyri.' I showed him my hand, which was changed to the talon of a primal beast. 'You would be as I am. But I would have you know, Janos, that the only reason you are human at all is because of your mother. I wanted her to have a child, and gave her a monster. But you called yourself a halfling and you are right. You are neither one thing nor the other, and no use to man nor beast. You desire flesh you can mould to suit yourself? So be it!' And I gathered up a gob of phlegm, froth and blood onto my forked tongue and hurled it into his gaping mouth, and massaged his throat until it was down. He gagged and choked until his eyes stood out in his face, but there was nothing he could do.

'There!' I laughed at him, madly. 'Let that grow in you and form the stretchy flesh you so desire, and make your own flesh like unto itself. Aye, for you'll need something of the vampire in you — if only to mend all your broken bones!'

And without more ado I hurled him from the cliff…

*

Janos was sorely broken. All his bones, as I had guaranteed, and his flesh all torn on the rocks. A man, he would have died. But there had always been something of me in him, and now there was even more. What I had spat into him spread faster than a cancer, except that unlike a cancer it spared, indeed saved, his miserable life. He would mend, and live to serve my purpose.

Before I went down into Hungary and headed for Zara, I commanded those Szgany I left behind me: 'Tend him well. And when he is mended give him my instructions. He is to stay here and guard my castle and lands, so that when I return there will be a welcome for me. Until then he is the master here, and his will be done. So let it be.'

Then I went to join the Great Crusade, the substance and outcome of which you already know…

As Faethor's voice tailed away, Harry looked up and all around and saw that the bulldozers were toiling now. Only two hundred yards away an old, raddled relic of a house went down in dust and shuddering debris, and Harry fancied he felt the earth shake a little. Faethor felt it too.

Will they get this far today, do you think?

The Necroscope shook his head. 'I shouldn't think so. In any case they seem to be working at random and don't appear to be in too much of a hurry. Will it affect you -1 mean, when they level this place? There's not much of it left to level anyway.'

Affect me? No, nothing can do that, for I'm no more. But it may make it damned hard to eavesdrop upon the dead, with all that rumble going on! And Harry sensed the extinct monster's hideous grin, as the monster in turn sensed the inevitability of a concrete tomb, probably in the heart of a bustling factory complex. A grin, yes, for Faethor would not accept Harry's concern, wouldn't even acknowledge it. Pointless therefore to say:

'Well, I hope you'll be… OK?' But the Necroscope said it anyway. And quickly, before his (or Faethor's) embarrassment could show through: 'But now I have to get on my way. I've learned a lot from you, I think, and of course I'm grateful for the power of deadspeak, which you've returned to me. If I may I'll contact you again, however — by night, of course, and probably from afar — so that you can finish your story. For I know that after the Fourth Crusade you came back to Wallachia and put an end to Thibor, and there must have been more between you and Janos, too. Since he is only recently risen, I know someone must have put him down. You, Faethor, I would suspect.'

He sensed the vampire's grim nod.

'Well, what was done once may be done a second time, with your assistance.'

You are welcome, Harry, any time. For after all, that is our dual purpose, to return him to dust. And now be on your way. I would like to rest a while in whatever peace is left to me — while I may.

But as Harry took up his holdall, so his feet squelched in the slime of the rotting toadstools. Their 'scent' reached him in a single poisonous waft. And:

'Ugh!' He couldn't hold back the exclamation of detestation. And Faethor picked it up, and perhaps saw in his mind something of the cause.

What? he said. Mushrooms? His mental voice was a little sharp, Harry thought, and suddenly nervous. Perhaps the finality of his situation was affecting him after all.

The Necroscope shrugged. 'Mushrooms, toadstools — fungi, anyway. The sun is steaming them away.'

He felt Faethor's shudder and could have bitten off his tongue. His last sentence had been thoughtlessly cruel. But… what the hell!… why should anyone feel sorry about the fate of a long-dead, morbid and totally evil thing like a vampire?

'Goodbye,' he said, heading out of Faethor's ruined house, back towards the graveyard and the dusty road beyond.

Farewell, that unquiet spirit answered him. And Harry, don't linger over what you must do but seek to make a quick end of it. Time may well be of the essence.

Harry waited a moment more but Faethor didn't elaborate…

As Harry climbed the rear wall of the old cemetery and stepped down among the plots and leaning slabs, someone very close to him said: Harry? Harry Keogh?

He jumped a foot and glanced all around. But… no one there! Of course not, for it was deadspeak at work — without the terrible mental agony he'd come to associate with it. He'd been denied the use of his macabre talent for so long that it would take a little time to get used to it again.

Did I startle you? asked the voice of some dead soul. I'm sorry. But we heard you talking to that dead Thing Who Listens, and we knew it must be you — Harry Keogh, the Necroscope. For who else among the living could it be, talking to the dead? And who else would even want to talk to or befriend such a Thing as that? Only you, Harry, who have no enemies among the Great Majority.

'Oh, I've a few,' Harry eventually, hesitantly answered. 'But mainly I get on with the teeming dead well enough, yes.'

Now the entire graveyard came, as it were, to life. Before, there had been a hush, an aching void to camouflage a pent-up… something. But now that something burst its banks like a river in flood, and a hundred voices suddenly required Harry's attention. They were full of the usual queries of the dead: how were those they'd left behind doing in the world of the living? What was happening in that bustling world of corporeal being, where minds were housed in flesh? Would it be possible for Harry to deliver a message to this oh so well-remembered and — loved father, or mother, or sister, or lover, and so on.