Deadspeak Page 18

  He’d once told her, “Now that it’s over I sometimes get this feeling it was all a dream, or a story read in a book of fantasy. Unreal, something I made up, or maybe an out-of-body experience. But that brings back all too clearly what it was really like to be incorporeal, and I know that it happened for a fact. How can I explain it? Have you ever dreamed you could fly? That you actually knew how to fly?”

  “Yes,” she’d answered, in her mildly Edinburghian Scottish accent. “Often, and very vividly. I used to run down a steeply sloping field to take off, and soar up over the Pentland hills, over the village where I was born. It was sometimes frightening, but I remember knowing exactly how it was done!”

  Harry had been excited. “That’s right! And waking up you tried to hang on to it, you were reluctant to let the secret vanish with the dream. And it vexed you when you were completely awake to learn that you were earthbound again. Well”—and he’d sighed as his excitement ebbed—“that’s pretty much how it sometimes is for me. Like something I had in a long series of childhood dreams, but burned out of me now and gone forever …”

  Better for you, Harry, she’d thought. That world was a dangerous place. You’re safe now.

  But not much good for E-Branch, and definitely not why she was here. On the contrary, they wanted his powers restored and didn’t much care how. And she was supposed to be part of the restoration team.

  She slipped into bed with him, as much for his warmth as for anything, and his free hand automatically cupped her breast. His body was lean and hard, well trained. He insisted on keeping it that way. “It’s years older than me,” he’d once told her, without an ounce of humour, “and so I have to look after it.” As if it wasn’t his but something he was caretaking. Hard to believe there’d been a time when it really wasn’t his. But she hadn’t known him—or it—then, and was glad for that.

  “Umm?” he murmured now as she moulded herself to him.

  “Nothing,” she whispered in the darkness of the room. “Shh!”

  “Umm …” he said again, and instintively drew her closer.

  He was warm and he was Harry. She’d never felt so safe with anyone before. Him with all his hang-ups, and yet when she was with him like this it was like clinging to a rock. She stroked his chest, but gently so as not to awaken or arouse him, and tried to will him into deeper sleep—

  —And like a fool willed herself there instead …

  Haaarry … ! Harry’s ma, Mary Keogh, called to him from her watery grave, and couldn’t get through to him. She never could these days, and knew why, but it didn’t stop her from trying. Harry, there’s someone who’s trying very hard to talk to you. He says you were friends, and that what he has to say is very important.

  Harry could hear her, but he couldn’t answer. He knew that he must not answer, for talking to the dead had been forbidden to him. If he should try it, or even consider trying it, then once more he’d hear that irresistible voice in his mind, reinforcing those commands by means of which his Necroscope powers had been made worthless.

  Under penalty of pain, you may not, Harry! Aye, great pain. Such torture that the voices of the teeming dead would be distorted beyond recognition. Such mental agony that you would never dare try again. I’ve no desire to be cruel, Father, but it’s for your own protection—as well as mine. Faethor Ferenczy, Thibor, and Yulian Bodescu, they might well have been the last—or they might not. The Wamphyri have powers, Father! And if there are more of them hidden in your world, how long before they seek you out and find you … before you can find them? But they will only seek you out if they have reason to fear you. Which is why I now remove such reason utterly! Do you understand?

  To which Harry had answered, “You do it for yourself. Not because you fear for me, but for you. You fear that I’ll come back one day, discover you in your aerie, and destroy you! I’ve told you I could never do that. Obviously my word isn’t good enough.”

  People change, Harry. You could change, too. I’m your son, but I’m also a vampire. I can’t chance it that you’ll not come looking for me one day with sword and stake and fire. I’ve said it before: as a Necroscope you’re dangerous, but without the dead you’re impotent. Without them, no more Möbius Continuum. You can’t come back here, nor seek me in the other places. And yes, this is another reason why I place these strictures upon you.

  “Then you doom me to torture. It’s inescapable. The dead love me. They will talk to me!”

  They may try, but you will neither hear nor answer them! Not consciously. I hereby deny you that talent.

  “But I’m a Necroscope! I talk to the dead out of habit! And what about when I grow old? If I ramble to the dead when I’m an old man, what then? Am I still bound to suffer? All my days?”

  Habits are for breaking, Harry. I say it one last time, and then if you doubt me, you may try it for yourself: you may not consciously speak to the dead, and if they speak to you, you must strike their words immediately from memory or—suffer the consequences. So be it.

  “And all the math Möbius taught me, am I to forget that, too?”

  You have already forgotten it! That is my most immediate stricture, for I won’t be invaded in my own territory! Now be done with arguing, for it’s over. It … is … done!

  At which Harry had felt a terrible wrenching in his mind, which made him cry out; followed by darkness; followed by …

  … His return to consciousness in London, at E-Branch HQ.

  That had been four years ago. He had told E-Branch all he could, helped them complete and close their files on him and all his works. He was no longer a Necroscope; he could no longer impose his metaphysical will on the physical universe; the branch should have no further use for him now. But even after they’d tried and discarded every means at their disposal to return his paranormal powers to him, still he’d been certain they wouldn’t let it rest there. As a Necroscope he’d been too great an asset. They’d never forget him, and if they could get him back, they would. And so would his millions of friends, the teeming dead. Oh, Harry’s actual friends—his real acquaintances among the Great Majority—numbered around one hundred only. But the rest knew of him. To them he would always be the one light in their eternal darkness.

  And now one of them, by far the most important one to Harry, was trying to speak to him again.

  Harry, oh my poor little Harry! Why won’t you answer me, son? He had always been her little Harry.

  “Because I can’t!” he wanted to tell her—but dare not, not even asleep and dreaming. For he’d tried once before, down at the riverbank, and now remembered it only too well.

  He’d gone there within the hour of his return to his home near Bonnyrig, the house which she had owned before him, and Viktor Shukshin in between. Shukshin had drowned her under the ice and left her body to float to this bight in the frozen river. There she’d settled to the bottom, to become one with the mud, the weeds, and the silt. And there she’d stayed—until the night Harry called her up again to take her revenge! Since when she’d lain here in peace, or been gradually washed away in pieces. But her spirit was here still.

  And it had been there when, like so many times before, he’d gone to sit on the riverbank and look down at the water where it was untroubled and deep and dark in that slowly swirling backwater of reeds and crumbling clay bank. It had been daylight; brambles and weeds growing across the old, disused paths by the river; bird song in the shady willows and spiky blackthorns.

  There were three other houses there beside his own; two of them were detached and stood in high-walled gardens extending almost to the river. They were empty and rapidly falling into disrepair, and had been up for sale for several years now. Every so often people would come to look … and go away shaking their heads. These were not “desirable” residences. No, it was a lonely place, which was why Harry liked it. He and his ma had used to talk in private here, and he’d never had to fear that someone might see him sitting here on his own, apparently mouthing nonsense to himself
.

  He hadn’t known what to expect that time; he only knew that conversation was forbidden, and that there’d be a penalty to pay if he tried to break the strictures placed on his esper’s mind. The acid test was the one thing E-Branch hadn’t attempted, mainly because he’d refused to go so far. Darcy Clarke had been in charge then, and Darcy’s talent had warned him away from pushing Harry, and Harry’s friends, too far.

  But there on the river Harry’s mother—the spirit of the innocent girl she had been—had not been able to resist talking to her son again.

  At first there had been only the solitude, the slow gurgle of the river, the bird song. But in a little while Harry’s singular presence had been noted. And: Harry? She had come breathlessly awake in his mind. Harry, is that you, son? Oh, I know it is! You’ve come home again, Harry!

  That was all she’d said to him—but it had been enough!

  “Ma—don’t!” he’d cried out, staggering to his feet and running, as someone ignited a Roman candle in his skull to shoot off its fireballs into the soft tissues of his brain! And only then had he known what The Dweller, Harry Jr., had really done to him.

  Such mental agony that you will never dare try again! That was what his vampire son had promised, and it was what he’d delivered. Not The Dweller himself, but the post-hypnotic commands he’d left behind, sealed in Harry’s mind.

  And nightfall had found Harry in the long grasses by the river’s edge, painfully regaining consciousness in a world where he now knew beyond any doubt that he was a Necroscope no more. He could no longer communicate with the dead. Or at least, not consciously.

  But asleep and dreaming … ?

  Haaarry … ! His mother’s voice called to him again, echoing through the endlessly labyrinthine vaults of his otherwise empty dream. I’m here, Harry, here. And before he knew it, he’d turned off and passed through a door, and stood once again on the riverbank, this time in streaming moonlight. And: Is that you, Harry? Her hushed mental voice told him that she scarcely dared to believe it. Have you really come to me?

  “I can’t answer you, Ma!” he wanted to say, but could only remain silent.

  But you have answered me, Harry! was her reply. And he knew it was so. For the dead don’t require the spoken word; sufficient to think at them, if you have the talent.

  Harry crumpled to the riverbank, adopted a foetal position, hugged his head with his arms and hands, and waited for the pain—which didn’t come!

  Oh, Harry, Harry! she said at once. Did you think that after that first time I’d deliberately hurt you or cause you to hurt yourself?

  “Ma, I”—he tried it again, wincing expectantly as he got to his feet—“I don’t understand!”

  Yes you do, son, she tut-tutted. Of course you do! It’s just that you’ve forgotten. You forget every time, Harry.

  “Forgotten? Forgotten what, Ma? What do I forget every time?”

  You forget that you’ve been here before, in dreams, and that what my grandson did to you doesn’t count here. That’s what you’ve forgotten, and you do it every time! Now call me up, Harry, so that I can talk to you properly and walk with you a little way.

  Was that right, that he could talk to her in dreams? He had used to in the old days—waking and dreaming alike—but it wasn’t like that now.

  But it is like it now, son. It’s just that you need reminding each time!

  And then another voice, not his mother’s, echoing more in the caverns of his memory than his sleeping mind proper.

  … You may not consciously speak to the dead. And if they speak to you, then you must strike their words immediately from memory or—suffer the consequences …

  “My son’s voice.” He sighed as understanding came at last. “So … how many times have we talked, Ma? I mean, since it started to hurt me … in the last four years, say?” And even as she began to answer him he called her up, so that she rose from the water, reached out and took his hand, and was drawn up onto the bank—a young woman again, as she’d been on the day she died.

  A dozen, twenty, fifty times (a mental shrug). It’s hard to say, Harry. For always it’s more difficult to get through to you. And oh, how we’ve missed you, Harry.

  “We?” He took her hand and they walked along the dark river path together, under a full moon riding high through a cloud-wispy sky.

  Me … and all your friends, the teeming dead. A hundred there are all eager to hear your gentle voice again, son; a million more who would ask what you said; and all the rest to enquire how you’re doing and what’s become of you. And as for me: why, I’m like an oracle! For they know that I’m the one you speak to most of all. Or used to …

  “You make me feel like I’ve forsaken some olden trust,” he told her. “But there never was one. And anyway, it isn’t so! I can’t help it that I can no longer talk to you. Or that I can’t remember the times when I do. And how has it become difficult to get through to me? You called me and I came. Was that so difficult?”

  But you don’t always come, Harry. Sometimes I can feel you there, and I call out to you, and you shy away. And each time the waiting grows longer between visits, as if you no longer cared, or had forgotten us. Or as if, perhaps, we’d become a habit? Which you now desire … to break?

  “None of that is true!” Harry burst out. But he knew that it was. Not a habit which he would break, no, but one which was being broken for him—by his fear. By his terror of the mental torture which talking to the dead would bring down on him. “Or if it is true,” he said, more quietly now, “then it’s not my fault. My mind would be no good to you burned out, Ma. And that’s what will happen if I push my luck.”

  Well, (and suddenly he was aware of a new resolve in her voice, and of the strengthening of her cold fingers where they gripped his hand) then something must be done about it! About your situation, I mean—for there’s trouble brewing, son, and the dead lie uneasy in their graves! Do you remember I told you, Harry, there was someone who wanted to talk to you? And how what he had to say was important?

  “Yes, I remember. Who is he, Ma, and what is it that’s so important?”

  He wouldn’t say, and his voice came from far, far away. But it’s strange when the dead feel pain, Harry, for death usually puts them beyond it!

  Harry felt his blood run cold. He remembered only too well how the dead, in certain circumstances, felt pain. Sir Keenan Gormley, murdered by Soviet mindspies, had been “examined” by Boris Dragosani, a necromancer. And dead as he had been, he had felt the pain. “Is it … like that?” he asked his mother now, holding his breath until she answered.

  I don’t know how it is—she turned to him and looked him straight in the eye—for this is something I’ve never known before. But, Harry, I fear for you! And before he could even attempt to reassure her: Oh, son, son, my poor little Harry—I fear so very, very much for you! Is it like that, you ask? And I say: will it be—can it ever be—like that again? And how, if you’re no longer a Necroscope? And then I pray that it can’t be. So you see, son, how I’m torn two ways. I miss you, and all the dead miss you, but if it puts you in danger, then we can do without it.

  He sensed that she was avoiding something. “Ma, are you sure you don’t know who he is, this one who tried to contact me? Are you sure you don’t know where he is, right now?”

  She let go his hand, turned away, avoided his eyes. Who he is, no, she said. But his voice, his mental voice, Harry, crying out like that. Oh, yes, I know where he is. And all the dead know it, too. He’s in hell!

  Frowning, he took her shoulders, gently turned her until she faced him again, and said, “In hell?”

  She looked at him, opened her mouth—and nothing but a gurgle came out! She coughed chokingly, spat blood … then straightened up, swelled out, wrenched herself free of his suddenly feeble grasp. He saw something in her mouth, forked and flickering, which wasn’t a human tongue! Her skin sagged and grew old, becoming wormy as centuried parchment in a moment! Flesh sloughed from her bones, revea
led her skull, smoked into dust as it fell from her like a rotting shroud! She cried out her horror, turned and fled away from him along the riverbank, paused a moment over the bight, and looked back. A rancid, disintegrating skeleton, she laughed at him even as she toppled into the water—and he saw that her eyes glowed crimson in the moonlight, and that the teeth in her skull were sharp, curving fangs!

  Nailed to the spot—fear-frozen there—Harry could only cry out after her, “Ma-aaa!” But it wasn’t his mother who heard and answered him.

  Haaarry! The voice came from a long way away, but still Harry whirled on the riverbank, staring this way and that in the moon-silvered night. There was no one there. Haaarry! It came again, but clearer in his mind. Haaarry Keeeooogh! And it was just as his mother had described it: a voice full of hell’s own torment.

  Still stunned by his mother’s metamorphosis—which he knew could only be some sort of dire warning, for it was nothing she would ever deliberately. engineer—Harry was at first unable to answer. But he recognised the voice’s despair, its anguish, its hopelessness, as it continued to call to him.

  Harry, for God’s sake! If you’re out there, please answer me. I know you shouldn’t, I know you daren’t—but you must! It’s happening again, Harry, it’s happening again!

  The voice was fading, its signal weakening, its telepathic potency waning. If Harry was ever to get to the bottom of this, he must do so now. “Who are you?” he said. “What do you want of me?”

  Haaarry! Harry Keogh! Help us! Its owner hadn’t heard him; the voice was trailing away, beginning to merge with a wind sprung up along the riverbank.

  “How?” he shouted back. “How can I help you? I don’t even know who you are!” But he suspected that he did. It was a rare thing for the dead to speak to him without rapport first being established by some form of introduction. Usually he had sought them out, following which they would normally be able to find him again. Which made him suspect that he’d known this one (or these ones?) before, probably in life.