Harry and the Pirates_and Other Tales from the Lost Years Page 19

  “At first they called it ‘the scourge’: a lethal strain of scurvy which they’d witnessed just once before, except now they had their doubts. And after four of the crew went down with it, night after night on four consecutive nights, then they considered their doubts confirmed. And aye, I have read it in your mind, Necroscope, that you have knowledge of this thing: from Billy Browen, no doubt? What, the scourge? A kind of scurvy? This shrivelling horror, that warped strong men to bags of bones, killing each one of them in a single night . . . ?

  “But Billy Browen was alert now, watching how things went: seeing members of the crew sidling off—going down below decks one by one, somehow lured down there—to gaze in rapt fascination through knotholes and gapped boards at their once-Captain in his golden kirtle. Or maybe it wasn’t so much Jake that they stared at as the sky-stuff.

  “As for Billy himself:

  “So far he’d done as his ‘darlin’ Cap’n’ requested of him; he’d looked after both Black Jake and young Will when they were incapable of taking care of themselves. Now, however—despite that the gradually mending, occasionally lucid youth would show Billy his blackened, withered hands—‘Mister’ Browen found himself ever more frequently lured below decks, just like the rest of the crew, to stare at a glassy-eyed Black Jake in the coldly glittering glow of the thing he wore . . . or rather, to stare at the thing that wore Jake as once it had worn Zhadia. . . .

  “Then one morning it was discovered that another four crew members, probably four of the strongest willed, had seen and so feared what was going on that they’d stolen a recently acquired rowboat and jumped ship; by which time the entire crew—or the handful that remained—had fallen into this dreadful malaise, no longer carrying out their rightful duties but forever sneaking belowdecks to look at the man in the golden robe.

  “Which was how things stood when a naval warship, creeping up on the Sea Witch one night, blew a hole in her hull right on the waterline and finished her off for good.

  “Will Moffat, while he would never more be entirely whole, at least had certain of his wits about him that night; or so he told me. Enough that as the vessel began to settle in the water he followed Billy below to warn him against what he believed he was about to do. For Billy was now so mazed in his own mind, so enamoured of the sky-stuff, that he wasn’t about to let it founder with the Sea Witch; while Will—for all that he was a mere lad—had resisted the sky-cloth’s attraction for so long that he was now mainly immune to it. But still he knew what it could do to others . . . and Billy Browen was the only man in the world who had ever shown him anything of real friendship.

  “And so as Billy came to Jake’s cell, already knee-deep in water, young Will caught up with him. The two looked in on Jake standing there with a cocked pistol to his head; where he’d got the weapon, who could say? Stolen on one of his outings: it had to have been.

  “Billy knocked the wedge from the door, yanked it open and reached for a corner of golden weave. Will rasped, ‘Mister Browen, take care! Leave it be!’ Black Jake cried, ‘Mister, I’m all done in, so to hell with you and everybody else!’ With which he squeezed his trigger, blew his ear off and a hole right through his head.

  “Shocked into his right mind, and gibbering in his terror, Billy clambered up towards the tilting deck; but before he could get there the sky-thing came wafting after. Having left Jake it now wrapped Billy like a shroud, stunning him with the agony of transition.

  “As for young Will Moffat: when he saw Billy stagger, stumble, and tumble overboard, he just lay down in the rising water and prayed for an easy death—

  “—Which as it happened wasn’t in his stars.

  “Will and Billy—the only survivors of the old Sea Witch—they were plucked from the briny, thrown in the man-o’-war’s brig, and were delivered to justice in Hartlepool when the ship got blown off course for London in a storm. Since both men were mazed and lacking finances they could neither defend themselves nor purchase a lawyer; and in any case they were pirates from a notorious ship, the sole survivors of Jake Johnson’s Sea Witch, and there had been a price on Billy’s head for almost a decade. All of these terms are Will Moffat’s, of course, which I’m sure you will understand far better than I did.

  “Anyway, to get done with this:

  “They were hung high right here on the harbour wall, young Will in a metal jacket to keep bits from falling off and stinking in the nostrils of the people, but loose enough so the seagulls and crows could feast on him; Billy Browen in his ‘cloth-of-gold’ robe, probably because it scarred the hands of any who tried to relieve him of it. . . .

  “And that’s that, Necroscope: as much as Will Moffat remembered of his life up to the point where he and Billy Browen got strung up on the sea wall. But for all Will’s time as a pirate, the lad’s suffering must have counted in his favour; there must have been lots of goodness in him for the Valkyrie to carry him off so quickly, while me and mine have spent all these hundreds of years here.

  “And now that really is it, I’ve said my lot. Except—

  “—Maybe now you’ll understand what so concerned me after I saw how you felt drawn back to that old graveyard. For that’s where Billy Browen is to this day, Harry, and who’s to say what cerecloths his old bones are wearing now, eh . . . ?”

  Who indeed? thought the Necroscope.

  And while the urgency within persisted, while yet he felt the need to return at once to the cemetery, Erik’s final words, spoken in genuine concern, gave Harry sufficient pause that his movements were less than hurried when he got down from the harbour wall, stretched his legs to revitalise them, then leaned on the wall and stared out over the water. For some few minutes he stood there thinking things through, considering his position.

  Events were more and more beginning to make sense, not all of it to his liking. If indeed there was danger in Hartlepool’s old cemetery, surely the Great Majority would have known of it? And if they knew of it why hadn’t they warned him? For they had had plenty of opportunity. Those of them lying at some distance from the graveyard might be innocent of knowledge, but the teeming dead who actually inhabited—no, bad word; “dwelled” then? No, even worse, for it implied life—who were ensconced there, they would certainly have known of any problem.

  And what of that wall of deadspeak babble and interference which they had thrown up between the Necroscope and Erik Haroldson and the old graveyard itself? If they didn’t want Harry and the Viking’s conversation to be overheard, why not simply bring the danger—whatever it might prove to be—to Harry’s attention, enabling him to raise his own shields and so preserve his privacy? Or was there perhaps something in that graveyard which they feared desperately, even more than they loved Harry Keogh? Well, possibly. But did that mean that he should fear it, too?

  Oh yes, very definitely!

  For the teeming dead, being dead and quite beyond harm—apparently—should have little or no reason to fear anything. Yet the Necroscope knew of things that even the Great Majority dreaded . . . no less than he himself: things he should avoid at all cost! Except being the Necroscope, he was the sworn guardian of the dead.

  For which reason—

  —He moved from the sea wall and sought cover, and hidden however briefly from human eyes conjured metaphysical maths and took the Möbius route back to the ancient graveyard. But now as he moved between the old plots, Harry was more than ever alert, taking in all that was available to his eyes, ears, and nostrils of the scenery, silence, and lurking imminence of the place. And its imminence was such that he could almost feel its weight—

  —Until he realised that this weight he felt was actually a gradually building hum, a throb, the burgeoning din of energies that seemed to be issuing from . . . from the Necroscope himself! Harry was the psychic “dynamo,” the human mechanism that was converting energy into the vibrant current that was emanating from him! But who or what was tapping into Harry’s unique mind, feeding it alien energy and using it as an amplifier? To what wei
rd receiver was this involuntary signal being transmitted, and what information was it carrying? A complete mystery: the Necroscope might hazard a reasonable guess in answer to at least one of these questions, the first of them, but he had no definite answer to any of them—not yet.

  Flinching from a blinding migraine that came stabbing out of nowhere to parallel Harry’s new concept and reduce his sensitivity to his surroundings, he approached Billy Browen’s grave. But then, as he stumbled against a tombstone that marked one of several previously noted, partly sunken plots, the groping hand with which he steadied himself revealed a badly weathered skull and crossbones design in crumbling bas-relief. The names, dates, and epitaphs, long since faded and lichened over, were unreadable, but the engraving itself told its own story, however inarticulate.

  Employed almost universally in times immemorial as death’s principal indicant, this macabre sigil was also that of pirates and their trade. And now, as Harry looked more attentively from headstone to ivied headstone, he saw that the leaning, occasionally broken markers over all of these oddly concave graves bore the selfsame grisly motif. What was more, this handful of partially collapsed plots had been arranged about Billy Browen’s in something of an irregular semicircle—almost as if to enclose it against the cemetery’s rear wall. . . .

  This meant something, Harry was sure. If not for the damnable buzzing and throbbing in his head, and the lights flashing before his eyes, he believed he might even be able to sense the revenants of the old pirates who were buried here holding their deadspeak breath! But while they appeared unwilling to speak to him, there remained at least one other “old pirate” who was:

  Harry? Is it you? came the enquiry in a “voice” previously presumed to be deadspeak—except now Harry saw that it wasn’t deadspeak but a perfect imitation, telepathy of a sort—and in no way a communication from a dead creature but from someone or thing very much alive, which yet issued from the grave to which he now felt irresistibly drawn. And:

  Ah, but of course! the voice went on, boldly now and even mockingly, showing never a trace of its previous piratical parlance. Of course it is the Necroscope, Harry Keogh himself! Who else could it be? Who else with a mind powerful enough to reach out to the stars and perhaps into other places? Who so dark and yet so innocent, fallible, that he can err, and grievously? Who of such enormous, misplaced conceit, that having confronted and defeated even the worst of men and monsters, he now believes he is invincible? A conceit which discovers nothing to fear in the allure of one who fell from the sky and was crippled. I am that one . . . ! Hurt, I gradually healed myself, conserving my energies down all the decades and even the centuries until the coming of a saviour—your coming, Harry!

  “Crippled? Healed yourself?” the Necroscope mumbled, clutching at his temples, going to his knees in the crumbly soil of Billy and something else’s grave. And even knowing the danger now, still he felt drawn like an iron filing to a magnet, fascinated by something in the ground, hypnotised, almost paralysed by a power which—inasmuch as it could use him like this, in a manner and for a purpose as yet undisclosed—must be at least the equal of his own.

  Yes I preserved myself, the sky-thing continued, conserved my energies, healed myself with the lives and discarded materia of an alien species—your species, Harry—ever hoping against hope that a mind such as yours would one day stray within range of my allure. But when finally that time dawned I was still too weak to take advantage, too afraid of your strength to approach you. Having usurped the mind of Billy Browen, I heard you speak to others who were buried here; and while I waited, I strove to learn the language of my host, to speak with his voice and mannerisms. Not difficult: his mind was mine from which to draw all such knowledge! But while all of this was several years ago, the waiting was only over when finally I knew that I could best you . . . which was today, when you returned to me and I saw that you could not resist my allure.

  On his knees beside the blank marble marker, reeling like a drunkard from the pain in his head, the Necroscope was barely able to control his thoughts when he mouthed: “But who . . . what are you?”

  A survivor! came the answer. I survived a war out there in the stars. When my vessel was destroyed and I fell to earth, or rather into an ocean, the water sapped what little strength remained in me; your sun’s rays revived me, returned something of my vitality, but not enough. The host creatures who succored me—on whom I relied for sustenance, the energies of their minds and bodies—had died with my ship; but I discovered an alternative subsistence in the men who rescued me from the sea . . . as I believe “Billy Browen” has already informed you. Oh, indeed!

  Reeling to alien laughter, Harry said, “First Zhadia, then Black Jake and the crew of . . . of the Sea Witch . . . and finally Billy. No, finally me!’ He rocked this way and that, clutching his skull as the hammering in his brain grew unbearably louder. “And the fact is I’ve never even met . . . never met or spoken to . . . to the real Billy! But what . . . what is it you’re doing . . . doing to me? And why . . . why are you doing it?”

  As the Necroscope fought to stay upright where he kneeled, suddenly he felt the earth shift beneath him: just a tremor, or a groping in the darkness of the dirt, but it filled him with a nameless dread. He knew he should up and run, but the magnetism of the thing in Billy Browen’s grave held him in place, and his murderous migraine continued to weaken him. It was all he could do to stay vertical against the alien attraction, while beneath his knees the soil was beginning to move like quicksand.

  Down there the thing from the stars wormed laboriously for the surface, loosening dirt and pushing it aside as it strained upwards for the light. Its “voice” was also strained as it answered Harry’s question:

  Your mind has the power which mine has lost. Now that you are drawn to me I can inspire your mind to greater efforts yet: such efforts will kill you, of course . . . even now the pressure builds within your brain, and you will die to give me life. You must suffer a little while longer; but only a little while. For even now the signal our combined minds are sending to the stars is being answered . . . and I sense others of my kind on their way to rescue me.

  Harry gasped, choked in his agony, and tried to do what he should have done at the first sign of trouble: conjure a Möbius door right there alongside him on the grave, and topple himself through it. But the metaphysical maths resisted him; instead of esoteric equations, fabulous formulae, the screen of the Necroscope’s mind issued an invisible beam not only into the sky but into all space! It travelled, not at the speed of light but the speed of thought; in fact it did not “travel” at all but simply “became” instantaneously! And yes, certain others were speeding to its source, to planet Earth, to this graveyard and the alien star-being that was now emerging from Billy Browen’s plot.

  A tumult of other voices—but true deadspeak voices now, from myriad cemetery plots silent until now—sprang into sudden, urgent existence in the Necroscope’s psychic perception:

  Go now, Harry, leave! Now that we know what this thing is, and that it will soon depart, save yourself! Use your powers to put miles, leagues, the span of a world between, where the creature’s will, its weird allure, can no longer reach you!

  With what small part of his consciousness remained to him, Harry answered in their own mode: And now you speak to me, when it’s too . . . too late. What was I, then? Some kind of scapegoat or sacrifice? My Möbius numbers are gone, obscured in the energies that this thing is channelling through me! I can’t . . . can’t move!

  The graveyard was empty of all living souls save the Necroscope himself . . . no possibility of help from any human hand or agency, not of the corporeal variety. Beside Harry the soil was bulging; something mobile, dull, the colour of patinated bronze, was pushing aside the earth beneath the marble slab, causing it to tilt. The once-golden sky-thing, almost drained of energy no less than Harry—its allure beginning to wane, but yet strong enough to hold him in place, to fascinate him as it had fascinated Zhadia an
d the crew of the Sea Witch—was exhuming itself into the daylight!

  The edge of a sentient, liquid bronze blanket curled over, touched Harry’s arm, froze for a split second . . . then quivered and stuck like glue! It immediately assumed a glowing lustre, a saffron sheen that moved rapidly from the point of contact down into the thing’s bulk where it was still buried in the dirt.

  The Necroscope cried out, lifted a shaking hand, and like the proverbial drowning man who clutches at straws, grasped the exposed rim of the marble slab and exerted leverage. It was his last, desperate attempt to push back from the lure of the star-thing.

  The partly tilted marker toppled onto its back, revealing its underside. And through eyes that could barely see by reason of the migraine that was tormenting him, finally Harry was able to read the inscription—a badly engraved couplet, its crudely erratic, antique lettering all clogged with dirt—which until now had lain hidden, sight unseen:

  Here lie the remains of Billy Browen—

  Pray God this stone helps keep him down!

  Harry’s arm to the shoulder felt cold . . . and yet it was a very terrible cold that was beginning to burn. In parallel, the edge of liquid metal where it seemed to have fused with his arm had become a siphon, gleaming an even brighter golden hue as it grew stronger, leeching on the Necroscope’s physical as opposed to his mental energies.