Deadspeak Read online

  Pavlos Themelis, seeing the transformation in the face of the man called Lazarides as he stepped aboard the Samothraki, thought his eyes must be playing him tricks. His first mate saw it, too, and frantically yanked his gun from its underarm holster.

  Too late, for Armstrong towered over him. The American used his briefcase to bat the gun aside even as it was brought into view, then grabbed the man’s gun hand and wrestled the weapon round to point at its owner’s head. Bullet Head didn’t stand a chance. Armstrong pointed the gun into his ear and said, “Hah!” And his victim, seeing the American’s one eye burning like sulphur—and his forked, crimson tongue, flickering in the gape of his mouth—simply gave up the ghost.

  “That one,” said Janos to Themelis, almost casually, “was a fool!” Which was Armstrong’s signal to pull the trigger.

  As his head flew apart in crimson ruin, Christos was tossed like a rag doll over the rail. Sliding down between the hulls, his body was crushed and ground a little before being dumped into the mist lying soft on the sea. The hole he made in it quickly sealed itself; the echo of the shot which had killed him, caught by the fog and tossed back, was still ringing …

  “Holy Mother of … !” Themelis breathed, helpless as his men were rounded up. But as Janos advanced on him he backed away and again, disbelievingly, observed the length of his head and jaws, the teeth in his monstrous mouth, the weird scarlet blaze of his terrible eyes. “J-J-Jianni?” the Greek finally got his brain working. “Jianni, I—”

  “Show me this cocaine.” Janos took hold of his shoulder with a steel hand, his fingers biting deep. “This oh so valuable white powder.”

  “It—it’s below …” Themelis’ answer was a mere breath; he could not, dare not, take his eyes from the other’s face.

  “Then take me below,” said Janos. But first, to his men: “You did well. Now do as you will. I know how hungry you are.”

  Even below decks Themelis could hear the screams of his crew; and he thought, What, Christos Nixos a fool? Maybe, but at least he didn’t know what hit him! And he wondered how long before his screams would be joining the rest …

  Forty minutes later the Lazarus’ diesels coughed into life and she drew slowly away from the now silent, wallowing Samothraki. The fog was lifting, stars beginning to show through, and soon the horizon would light with the first crack of a new day.

  When the Lazarus was a quarter mile away, the doomed ship blew apart in a massive explosion and gouting fire. Bits of her spiralled or fluttered back to the foaming sea and were put out, leaving only their drifting smoke. She was no more. In a few days pieces of her planking might wash ashore, maybe a body or two, possibly even the bloated, fish-eaten corpse of Pavlos Themelis himself …

  V: Harry Keogh Now: Ex-Necroscope

  HARRY WOKE UP KNOWING THAT SOMETHING WAS HAPPENing or about to happen. He was propped up in the huge old bed where he’d nodded off, his head against the headboard, a fat, black-bound book open in his slack hands. The Book of the Vampire: a so-called factual treatise which examined the elemental evil of the vampire down through all the ages to modern times. It was light reading for the Necroscope, and many of its “well-authenticated cases” little more than grotesque jokes; for no one in the world—with one possible exception—knew more about the legend, the source, the truth of vampirism than Harry Keogh. That one exception was his son, also called Harry, except that Harry Jr. didn’t count because in fact he wasn’t “in” this world at all but … somewhere else.

  Harry had been dreaming an old, troubled dream: one which mingled his life and loves of fifteen years gone by with those of the here and now, turning them into a surreal kaleidoscope of eroticism. He had dreamed of loving Helen, his first groping (mental as well as physical) sexual experience; and of Brenda, his first true love and the wife of his youth; so that however strange and overlapping, these had been sweet and familiar dreams, and tender. But he had also dreamed of the Lady Karen and her monstrous aerie in the world of the Wamphyri, and it seemed likely that this was the dreadful dream which had started him awake.

  But somewhere in there had been dreams of Sandra, too, his new and—he hoped—lasting love affair, which because of its freshness was more vivid, real, and immediate than the others. It had taken the sting of poignancy from some of the dream, and the cold clutch of horror from the rest of it.

  That was what he had been dreaming about: making love to the women he had known, and to one he knew now. And also of making love to the Lady Karen, whom mercifully he had never known—not in that way.

  But Sandra … they’d made love before on several occasions—no, on many occasions, though rarely satisfactorily—always at her place in Edinburgh, in the turned-down green glow of her bedside lamp. Not satisfactory for Harry, anyway; of course he couldn’t speak for Sandra. He suspected, though, that she loved him dearly.

  He had never let her know about his—dissatisfaction? Not merely because he didn’t want to hurt her, more especially because it would only serve to highlight his own deficiency. A deficiency, yes, and yet at the same time something of a paradox. Because by comparison with other men (Harry was not so naive as to believe there had been no others) he supposed that to Sandra he must seem almost superhuman.

  He could make love to her for an hour, sometimes longer, before bringing himself to climax. But he was not superhuman, at least not in that sense. It was simply that in bed he couldn’t seem to get switched on to her. When he came, always it was with some other woman in his mind’s eye. Any other woman: the friend of a friend or some brief, chance encounter; some cover girl or other; even the small girl Helen from his childhood, or the wife Brenda from his early manhood. A hell of a thing to admit about the woman you think you love, and who you’re fairly sure loves you!

  His deficiency, obviously, for Sandra was very beautiful. Indeed, Harry should consider himself a lucky man—everybody said so. Maybe it was the cool, green, subdued lighting of her bedroom that turned him off: he didn’t really care for green. And her eyes were greenish, too. Or a greeny blue, anyway.

  That’s why her part of this dream had been so different: in it they had made love and it had been good. He had been close to climax when he woke up … when he’d come awake knowing that something was about to happen.

  He woke up in his own bed, in his own country house near Bonnyrig, not far out of Edinburgh, with the book still in his hands. And feeling its weight there … so maybe that’s what had coloured his dreams. Vampires. The Wamphyri. Not surprising, really: they’d coloured most of his dreams for several years now.

  Outside, dawn was on the brink; faint streamers of light, grey green, filtered through the narrow slits of his blinds; they tinted the atmosphere of his bedroom with a faint watercolour haze, a wash of subdued submarine tints.

  Half-reclining there, becoming aware, coming back to life, he felt a tingle start up in his scalp. His hair was standing up on end. So was his penis, still throbbing from the dream. He was naked, electrically erect—and now aware and intent.

  He listened intently: to murmuring plumbing sounds as the central heating responded to its timer, to the first idiot twitterings of sleepy birds in the garden, to a world stretching itself in the strengthening dawn outside.

  Harry rarely slept more than an hour or two at a stretch, and dawn was his favourite time—normally. It was always good to know that the night was safely past, a new day under way. But this time he felt that something was happening, and he gazed intently through the faint green haze, turning his eyes to stare at the open bedroom door. Drugged by sleep, he saw everything with soft edges, fuzzy and indistinct. There was nothing sharp in the entire room. Except his inexplicable intentness, which seemed odd when matched against his blurred vision.

  Anyone who ever started awake after a good drunk would know how he felt. You half know where you are, you half want to be somewhere special, you are half-afraid of not being where you should be; and even when you know where you are, you’re still not quite sure y
ou’re there, or even that you are you. Part of the “never again” syndrome.

  Except that Harry had not been drinking—not that he could remember, anyway.

  The other thing that invariably affected him on those occasions when he woke up like this—the thing which had used to frighten him a great deal, but which he’d thought he was used to—was his paralysis. The fact that he could not move. It was only the transition from sleep to waking, he knew that, but still it was horrible. He had to force gradual movement into his limbs, usually starting with a hand or a foot. He was paralysed now, with only his eyes to command of all his various parts. He made them stare through the open bedroom door into the shadows beyond.

  Something was happening. Something had awakened him. Something had robbed him of the satisfaction of spilling himself into Sandra and enjoying it for once. Something was in the house …

  That would account for his tingling scalp, his hair standing erect at the back of his neck, his wilting hard. A perfume was in the air. Something moved in the shadows beyond the bedroom door: a movement sensed, not heard. Something came closer to the door, paused just out of sight in darkness.

  Harry wanted to call out, “Who’s there?” but his paralysis wouldn’t let him. Perhaps he gurgled a little. A shape emerged partly from the shadows. Through the submarine haze he saw a navel, the lower part of a belly with its dark bush of pubic hair, the curve of soft feminine hips and the tops of thighs where they might show above dark stockings. She stood (whoever she was) just beyond the door, her flesh soft in the filtered light. As he watched she transferred her weight from one unseen foot to the other, her thighs moving, her hip jutting. Above the belly, soft in the shadows, there would be breasts large and ripe. Sandra had large breasts.

  It was Sandra, of course.

  Harry’s voice still refused to work, but he could now move the fingers of his left hand. Sandra must be able to see him, see how she was affecting him. His dream was about to become reality. The blood coursed in his veins and began to pound once more. In the back of his mind, faintly, he asked himself questions. And answered them.

  Why had she come?

  Obviously for sex.

  How had she got in?

  He must have given her a key. He didn’t remember doing so.

  Why didn’t she come forward more clearly into view?

  Because she wanted to see him fully aroused first. Perhaps she had not wished to wake him until she was in bed with him.

  Why had she waited so long to show him that she could be sexually aggressive? She’d taken the initiative before, certainly, but never to this extent.

  Maybe because she sensed his uncertainty—feared that he might be having second thoughts—or perhaps because she suspected he had never fully enjoyed her.

  Well, and maybe she was right.

  Staring was causing his right eye to jump, both eyes to water. It was the poor light. Harry willed his left hand to move, stretched it out, pulled the cord that closed the window shutters—to shut out a little more of the faint, greeny-grey light. That left the room in near darkness—thin dim green stripes on a black velvet background. And that was what she’d been waiting for.

  Now she moved forward, olive-fleshed. She must be wearing stockings; a T-shirt, too, rolled up to show her navel. Sexy, dismembered by darkness, her thighs, belly, and navel floated towards him, hips moving languidly, green-striped. She got onto the bed, kneeling, her thighs opening, and inched forward. The dark cleft was visible in her bush of pubic hair. She was so silent. And so light. The bed did not sink in where she crept towards him. Harry wondered, How does she do that?

  She began to lower herself onto him—slowly, so slowly—the dark cleft widening as her body settled to its target. He arched his back, straining up towards her … but why couldn’t he feel her knees gripping his hips? Why was she so weightless?

  Then, suddenly and without warning, his flesh was crawling. Lust fled him in a moment. For somehow—instinctively, intuitively—he knew that this was not Sandra. And worse, he knew that he couldn’t rightly say what it was!

  His left hand fumblingly found the light cord, pulled it.

  Light flooded the room blindingly.

  At the same time the cleft in her bush of pubic hair sprang open like a mechanical thing! White-gleaming, yawning jaws of salivating needle teeth set in bulging, obscenely glistening pink gums shot down from the gaping lips to snap shut on him in a vise of shearing agony!

  Harry screamed, rammed himself backwards in his bed, banged his head savagely on the headboard. Galvanised, his hands stabbed out, striking murderously for a face, a throat—striking instinctively at features … which weren’t there!

  Above the navel—nothing! And below the upper thighs-nothing!

  She—it—was a lower abdomen, a disembodied vagina with cannibal teeth which were chomping on him! And his blood hot and red and spurting as the thing feasted on his genitals and munched them up like so much slop. And a crimson eye that snapped suddenly open, glaring at Harry from the orbit which he had mistaken for a navel!

  “And that’s it, Harry?” Dr. David Bettley, an E-Branch empath retired early for the sake of his shaky heart, gazed at his visitor from beneath half-lowered, bushy eyebrows.

  “Isn’t it enough?” the other answered, with some animation. “Christ, it was enough for me! It scared the living daylights out of me. Yes, even out of me! I mean, don’t think I’m bragging but that’s no easy thing to do. It’s just that this damn dream was so … so real! We all have nightmares, but this one …” He shook his head, gave an involuntary shudder.

  “Yes, I can see how badly it affected you,” said Bettley concernedly. “But when I say ‘that’s it,’ it isn’t to make light of your experience. I’m simply asking, was there any more?”

  “No.” Harry shook his head. “For that’s when I actually came awake. But if you mean more reaction to it? You’d better believe there was! Look, I was weak as a kitten. I’m sure I was in shock. I felt physically sick, almost threw up. Also, I emptied my bowels—and I’m not ashamed to admit that I only just made it to the toilet! I don’t mean to be crude, but that dream literally scared the shit out of me!” He paused, slumped back in his chair, and lost a little of his animation. He looked tired, Bettley thought.

  But eventually he struggled upright again and continued. “Afterwards … I prowled the house with all the lights blazing, with a meat cleaver in my hand. I searched for the thing everywhere. For an hour, two, until full daylight. And most of that time I was shaking like a leaf. It was only when I’d stopped shaking that I finally convinced myself it was a dream.” He suddenly laughed, but his laughter was shaky even now. “Hey! I nearly called the police. Can you picture that? I mean, you’re a psychiatrist, but how do you think they’d have taken my story, eh? Maybe I’d have been in to see you a day or two earlier!”

  Dr. Bettley steepled his fingers and stared deep into the other’s eyes. Harry Keogh was maybe forty-three or -four (his body, anyway) but looked five years younger. Except Bettley knew that his mind was in fact five years younger again! It was a weird business dealing with—even looking at—a man ike Harry Keogh. For Bettley had known this face and body before, when it belonged to Alec Kyle.

  The doctor shook his head and blinked, then deliberately avoided Harry’s eyes. It was just that sometimes they could be so very soulful, those eyes of his …

  As for the rest of him:

  Harry’s body had been well fleshed, maybe even a little overweight, once. With its height, however, that hadn’t mattered a great deal. Not to Alec Kyle, whose job with E-Branch had been in large part sedentary. But it had mattered to Harry. After that business at the Chateau Bronnitsy—his metempsychosis—he’d trained his new body down, got it to a peak of perfection. Or at least done as best he could with it, considering its age. That’s why it looked only thirty-seven or -eight years old. But better still if it was only thirty-two, like the mind inside it. A very confusing business … and the doctor
shook his head and blinked again.

  “So what do you make of it?” Keogh asked. “Could it be part of my problem?”

  “Your problem?” Bettley repeated him. “Oh, I’m sure it is. I’m sure it could only be part of your problem—unless of course you haven’t put me fully in the picture.”

  Harry raised an eyebrow.

  “About your feelings towards Sandra. You’ve mentioned a certain ambivalence, a lack of desire, even a slackening of potency. It could be that you’re taking your loss out on her—mentally, inside your head—blaming her for the fact that you’re no longer …” He paused.

  “A Necroscope?” Harry prompted.

  “Possibly.” Bettley shrugged. “But … on the other hand you also seem ambivalent towards your loss. I have to tell you that sometimes I get the feeling you’re glad it’s gone, glad you can no longer talk to … to …”

  “To the dead,” said Harry sourly. And: “Well, you’re half-right. Sometimes it’s good to be just normal, ordinary. Let’s face it, most people would consider me a freak, even a monster. So you’re half-right. But you’re also half-wrong.” He lay back in the chair again, closed his eyes and stroked his brow.

  Bettley went back to studying him.

  Grey streaks, so evenly spaced as to seem deliberately designed or effected, were plentiful in Harry’s russet-brown, naturally wavy hair. It wouldn’t be too many years before the grey overtook the brown; even now it loaned him a certain erudition, gave him the look of a scholar. Ah, but in what strange and esoteric subjects? And yet Harry wasn’t like that at all. What, a black magician? A twentieth-century wizard? A necromancer? No, just a Necroscope, a man who talked to the dead—or used to.

  Of course, he had other talents, too. Bettley looked at him sitting there, so tired looking, his hand to his brow. The places this man had been! The means he’d used to go there, and to return. What other man had ever used an obscure mathematical concept as a … a spaceship, or a time machine?