Brian Lumley - The Source

At Perchorsk it was an hour after midnight. The room of the thing was in darkness, where only the red ceiling lights gave any illumination. Harry emerged from the Mobius Continuum there, stared all about in the red-tinged gloom and felt the sinister heart of the place throbbing through the floor under his feet. Then he saw the tank, and the shape inside it, but for the moment he couldn't quite see what that shape was.

Me! said Kazimir Kirescu. My resting place. Except it doesn't rest.

'Doesn't rest?' Harry repeated him, but softly. There were dimmer switches on the wall, a nest of them. Harry reached for them, went to turn up the lights. They came up slowly. 'Oh, my God!' said Harry in a shaky whisper. 'Kazimir?'

That's what ate me! the other answered, in a voice horrified as Harry's own. That's where I am. I don't mind being dead so much, Harry, but I would like to lie still.

Harry moved uncertainly across the room toward the creature in the tank. It seemed slug-or snail-like; its corrugated 'foot' or lower body pulsated where it adhered to the glass wall; atop its lolling neck sat an almost human head with the face of an old man. Flaccid 'arms' hung down bonelessly from rubbery 'shoulders', and several rudimentary eyes gazed wetly, vacantly from where they opened like suckers in the thing's dark skin. Its normal eyes — those in the old man's face — moved to compensate for the languid lolling of the head, remained firmly fixed upon Harry. But they were only normal in that they occupied a face. Other than that, they were uniformly scarlet.

My face, said Kazimir with a sob. But not my eyes, Harry. And dead or alive, no man should be part of this thing.

And then, while Harry continued to stare at the monstrosity, Kazimir told him all he knew about the Perchorsk Projekt, and of the events leading to his current predicament…

Fifteen minutes later and a mere fifty yards away:

Major Chingiz Khuv, KGB, came awake, sat up jerkily in his bed. He was hot, feverish. He'd been dreaming, nightmaring, but the dreams were quickly receding in the face of reality. Reality, as Khuv was well aware, was often far more nightmarish than any dream. Especially here in Perchorsk. But it was as if the unremembered dreams were premonitory; Khuv's nerves were already jangling to the buzzing of his doorbell. He got up, threw on a dressing-gown and went to the door.

It was Paul Savinkov, puffing and panting from his exertions, his fat hands fluttering.

'What is it, Paul?' Khuv brushed sleep from the corners of his eyes.

'We're not sure, Major. But… Nik Slepak and I — '

Khuv came fully awake on the instant. Savinkov and Slepak were both ESP-sensitives; they could detect and recognize foreign telepathic sendings, psychic emanations, anything of a paranormal nature. And in the event of ESPionage, they were adept at intercepting and scrambling alien probes.

'What is it, Paul?' Khuv demanded this time. 'Are they spying on us again?'

Savinkov gulped. 'It could be worse than that,' he said. 'We think… we think something is here!'

Khuv's jaw dropped. 'You think something is — ?' he grabbed the other's arm. 'Something from the Gate, do you mean?'

Savinkov shook his head. His fat face was shiny, eyes very bright. 'No, not from the Gate. Those things that come through the Gate, they leave a slimy trail in the mind. They're alien — to this world, I mean. This thing we can sense here, it isn't that sort of alien. It might even be a man; Nik Slepak thinks so. But it — he, whatever — has no right to be here. Two things we're sure of: whatever it is, it's powerful! And it is here.'

'Where?' Khuv threw back the top half of his dressing-gown, thrust his left arm through the leather loop of a shoulder-holster hanging from a peg inside the door. The holster contained Khuv's KGB-issue automatic. Belting his dressing-gown savagely about his waist, he shoved Savinkov ahead of him down the exterior corridor.

'Where?' he shouted now. 'What, are you deaf as well as queer? Has Slepak also been struck dumb?'

'We don't know where, Major,' the fat esper gasped. 'We've got our locator on it, Leo Grenzel.' As he stuttered his apologies, so Slepak and Grenzel came hurrying round the bend of the corridor. They saw Khuv and Savinkov, hurried to meet them.

'Well?' said Khuv to Grenzel, a small, sharp-featured East German.

'Encounter Three,' Grenzel whispered. His eyes were an incredibly deep grey and very large in his small face. Never larger than right now.

Khuv frowned at him. 'The thing in the glass tank? What about it?'

That's where he is,' Grenzel nodded. His face was pale, strangely serene, like the mask of a sleep-walker. His talent affected him that way.

Khuv turned sharply to Savinkov. 'You — hurry, get Vasily Agursky.' Savinkov made off down the corridor. 'I said hurry.' Khuv called after him. 'Meet us in the room of the creature, and make sure you're both armed!'

Harry had listened to Kazimir's grim tale. He now knew about the fate of the old man's family, especially Tassi. He knew a little about Chingiz Khuv, too, about his espers and handful of KGB thugs; but he still didn't know the Projekt's secret, which lay in the heart of the place.

Kazimir had not been privy to that, had no knowledge of it.

'This… thing,' said Harry. 'Do you know what it is?' No, only that it's horrible! Kazimir answered in Harry's mind. 'It's a vampire,' Harry told him. 'At least, I think it is.

And you don't know how it got here? Was it perhaps made here?'

know nothing about it.p>

Harry nodded, chewed his lip. 'About your daughter: do you know where she is? Show me a plan of this place in your mind. Or as much as you know of it.'

Kazimir was glad to co-operate, said: She was in the cell next to mine.

Again Harry's nod, and: 'Kazimir, you have my word that if I can find her, I'll take her out of this. More than that, if I can find her mother I'll reunite them in a safe place.'

The old man's mental sigh of relief was almost audible. If you can do that, then it's enough. Don't worry about me.

'But I do. Kazimir, this thing isn't you. You were dead when it… when you… you were already dead.'

I feel part of it. I'm being absorbed by it.

Harry chewed harder on his lip. He'd seen the room's equipment. He had a plan but wasn't sure if it would work. 'What if I could kill this thing? You can't die twice, Kazimir.'

Destroy it and I'll be free, I'm sure! Renewed hope rang in the old man's mental voice. But… how can you destroy it?

Harry knew how: the stake, the sword and the fire. If this creature had a vampire in it, then these things would kill it. So… why not skip the first two steps and go straight to the third?

Outside, ringing faintly, running footsteps sounded. And somewhere an alarm bell had started to gong its raucous warning through the bowels of the subterranean complex.

They know I'm here,' Harry said. 'This has to be quick.'

He wheeled Agursky's shock-box over to the tank. It was an electrical transformer on wheels, with a flexible heavy-duty cable to a wall socket. It had a pair of clamps on coiled extension leads, which Harry quickly made fast to terminals on the side of the tank. Watching him, the creature came to life, changing colour and shape as it began to work through several rapid metamorphoses. It knew what the shock-box was, knew what was coming. Or it thought it did.

Harry didn't have time to watch its contortions, and in any case he didn't want to. Feeling slightly sick he turned on the current — and the thing at once went berserk!

Harry wasted no time but turned the current up all the way. The clamps sputtered and issued blue sparks, smoke and a heavy ozone reek. The room's lights flickered momentarily, then steadied and brightened again. High-voltage current flowed through electrical cables in the glass walls of the tank, and the creature took the full charge. It became a writhing puppet of a man, small, with one tiny arm and hand and one huge one. It balled a massive fist, a fist almost as big as Harry's head, and slammed it again and again at the glass wall of its prison — the wall of its incinerator.