Harry and the Pirates_and Other Tales from the Lost Years Page 8

  As Harry withdrew his hand, Forester relaxed and finally, huskily said, “I’ve had this stuff bottled up in me for a long time. I really loved that girl, you know? She was truly wonderful, my first love, and if I had my way she’d have been my last and would still be here. Oh, sure, I loved Janet, but it didn’t work that way for her. Yes we were sweethearts for a while—at least I thought we were—but for her it was just kids’ stuff, not the real thing. I was more a friend than someone she wanted to stay with for life. So that when Miller came along . . . well, she thought he was the real thing, and the change came quickly.

  “Harry, you could never understand what that was like for me. To be so deeply in love—me, a young policeman and friend of Janet’s father, having to watch him suffer because after his wife died Janet was all he had left and he could feel her slipping away—and me, having to comfort him but no one to comfort me, while they were out walking, talking, holding hands and . . . and doing God-only-knows what else, Janet and that bloody, that crazy Greg Miller!”

  Harry nodded. “So Miller took your girl away from you. I’m sorry to sound so cold but that’s what it boils down to. And it hardly makes him a killer. As for him being psychotic: maybe he was—perhaps he still is—so why not tell me the whole story, from your point of view, and then let me make up my own mind?”

  “The whole story?” The other repeated Harry, his forehead furrowed, frowning. “Step by step, d’you mean?” Half in denial, he shook his head.

  “Any way you like,” said Harry.

  “But isn’t your friend waiting for you?” Forester indicated Jimmy at the bar, where he sat enjoying his beer. “Young Collins the electrician, isn’t it?”

  Again Harry nodded. “He’ll be okay. He won’t bother us.”

  Forester slumped down again. “Very well—but we’ll do it my way. I won’t tell you the story the way Miller tells it, because I won’t have any truck with sheer fantasy! So this is how we’ll proceed. You show me your evidence—or what you think is evidence, that tends to prove his innocence—and I’ll tell you my conclusions, how I’ve tried to rationalize these things over the years. And we’ll see how easily you can be shot down!”

  “Agreed,” Harry answered. But after thinking it over for a moment, and when he tried to begin with: “First we should—”

  “—Wait a moment!” Forester barked. “First you should know that . . . well, that I think this may be—I don’t know, how do they say?—therapeutic? Or cathartic? I mean . . . I’m not sure what you’ve got that no one else I ever knew has, but since you sat down I’ve found myself toying with the notion that perhaps I can talk to you. Maybe I just need to get all this stuff off my chest, I can’t say for sure. But don’t get me wrong, there’s no way you could ever convince me of Miller’s innocence. It’s more that I’m going along with this to clear my head, get rid of all the rubbish that’s accumulated in there. Which has to be better than continuously thinking about Janet and her father, poor old Arnold—unable to get it off my mind, the way he jumped—and keep finding myself sitting in my car, parked up there on Ellison’s Bank, looking down across the village . . . looking down at . . . at that . . . that damned old viaduct!” He paused and visibly shuddered.

  Sensing, understanding, the constable’s meaning—that he, too, had considered jumping—the Necroscope could feel Forester’s fear. And staring hard at him, challenging him to meet his gaze, he said, “Oh, really? And you think Greg Miller is crazy? Jack, the way you’re feeling, what you’re suggesting, that has to be the real madness! I understand that you loved that girl, and I can fully understand how her disappearance might disturb the balance of her father’s mind—but you’re not her father! And you were a lot younger, stronger, then. Are you saying that this has been preying on your mind for all of fifteen years!?”

  Yet again Forester sat up straighter. He took a long swig at his beer, a very deep breath, and looked about to get angry. But then, letting all the air out in a sigh, he said, “It isn’t all the time. But sometimes—up in the fields near Hazeldene, when I’m keeping an eye on Miller—well, I’m not sure why, but sometimes up there I can get to feel very, you know, depressed and sick at heart? I mean, I can start feeling so low that I really don’t know why I’m alive, or why I would want to be. . . .”

  Pausing to blink and rub at his eyes, and shaking his head as if to wake himself up, Forester finally continued, “But this is getting us nowhere and I shouldn’t have interrupted you. You were about to say . . . ?” He had deliberately changed the subject, and the Necroscope knew it. But he also knew that the constable was right and they were getting nowhere. For which reason:

  “Okay,” he said, “let’s start again and revisit this World War II thing: these girls—and sometimes young couples—who disappeared during air-raid blackouts. You said Miller’s lawyer brought it up during the trial, and I know for a fact that Greg Miller himself has been at work gathering together a dossier of similar cases. But you spoke of such things as being worthless, no use at all as evidence. Now why was that?”

  Forester nodded, and sounding a lot more rational replied, “Very well, let’s deal with that:

  “You and me, Harry, we weren’t even born during World War II, and not for a long time after. Maybe we should consider ourselves lucky at that, because at the time a lot of less fortunate young fellows were reaching eighteen years of age and being drafted to go and fight der Führer. If you lived in a colliery, however, and had mining experience, you had a choice: you could always work down the mine, because coal mining was indispensable to the country’s war effort. Apart from which, and a handful of other protected trades, there was only—”

  “—The armed forces,” said Harry.

  “That’s right: the Army, the Navy, or the Air Force. It was your duty. But as in every war there were so-called ‘conscientious objectors,’ though often as not their main objection was to being cannon fodder! And who can blame them for that? But there were also those who—all excuses aside—simply cut and ran. Maybe it wasn’t always cowardice; perhaps some of them had what they considered reasonable objections other than conscientious. Those who had young lovers, for instance: girlfriends, prospective wives . . . people they couldn’t bear to be parted from, who they felt the need to protect during dangerous times.

  “And what better opportunity for the occasional young fellow to abscond, ‘presumed dead’—as often as not along with a special loved one—than during one of those German air-raids, eh? Oh, a terrible thing, to be blown to bits by a German bomb! And yes, people did get blown to bits and go missing in London! But here, in the north-east, the collieries? Why, you can count the casualties, meaning genuine, proven casualties, on one hand! Okay, Miller has his dossier of so-called ‘disappearances,’ but does he also have one for all the cases that the Redcaps had to deal with?”

  “Redcaps?”

  “The Military Police, Harry, who were stuck with the task of tracking down all the AWOLs and deserters. They worked hand in hand with local police authorities, and I’ve read plenty of their notes, reports, accounts in old ledgers. You want to know something? Up until seven or eight years ago—all those years later—men were still turning themselves in! Middle-aged fellows who ‘disappeared, presumed dead’ in 1942–’43, the middle of the war years. Sometimes they had wives, who ‘disappeared’ with them! As for how they got away with it for so long—well, who can say? They changed their names, kept moving from job to job, brought up families . . . you name it. But the point I’m making, the girls who ran off with these AWOLs or deserters under cover of German air-raids and/or in other circumstances: they weren’t killed by Miller’s bloody forest monster. They moved away, went underground, that’s all; they escaped from unhappy, unfortunate situations. Miller’s dossier and the ‘evidence’ that his lawyer produced: these things were just a bunch of red herrings thrown into the mix to confuse and deceive. . . .”

  Listening to all this, remaining silent as he took it in, Harry found his faith
in himself and his own beliefs beginning to falter; but he wasn’t about to give in. Eager to regain control, perhaps too eager, and letting the words tumble from his mouth, he said, “Did you know that Miller has even traced similar cases back to Roman times?” But having blurted it out, he just as quickly realised how weak, even ridiculous, that statement must have sounded. And so:

  “I mean . . .” He began again, more cautiously.

  But Forester was slowly shaking his head, peering at the Necroscope curiously and with the suggestion of a wry, knowing smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Oh, and now who’s crazy?” he said. “What’s all this, Harry? Another of Miller’s ‘dossiers’? What, Roman times? Now we really are scraping the bottom of the barrel!”

  Harry sighed and said, “Well, while I suppose you’ll find it risable, I’ve seen documents dating back to the second century A.D. showing how a centurion put great swaths of Hazeldene to the torch, set it ablaze, to stop a ‘forest demon’ stealing away young women from a nearby hamlet—which would just have to be Harden, of course.”

  “You know,” Forester replied, “it’s true I’m just another son of a miner, born and bred right here in the north-east, but if there’s one subject I was good at in school it would have to be history. And the Romans—for all their achievements in the arts, empire building, warfare, their structuring of social and governmental systems—still they were probably as superstitious a so-called civilised people as ever existed. They stocked their religious or supernatural pantheons and demonologies with stolen and borrowed gods and devils from almost every race they encountered, and having been ambushed by ‘foreign demons’—the barbaric tribes of the period—in every thicket and copse they bulldozed their way through in France, Germany, Belgium, indeed the whole of Europe . . . well, it hardly surprises me they credited the existence of monsters in Britannic woodlands too! What you should remember, Harry: in those days forests were forests. Coast to coast and from John o’ Groats to Land’s End, there were dense, fearsome woodlands almost everywhere. What? Why, fifteen hundred or more years later we were still building our fighting ‘ships of oak’ from those very forests! Huh!”

  The constable paused—at least until it looked like Harry was about to reply—then said: “And before you start searching your brain for more ‘dossiers,’ you should consider this:

  “Forests have always attracted maniacs, murderers, and rapists. I defy you to find a single wooded tract of any considerable size in the entire British countryside that hasn’t at some time or other been the scene of this sort of heinous crime. And as far as I’m concerned Greg Miller is just such a madman, with Hazeldene just such a forest. . . .”

  Pausing again, Forester drank a little beer to moisten his throat, and continued: “I think that’s me done. So then, have I shot you down or what?”

  The Necroscope shook his head. “No,” he very quietly said. “And I still haven’t seen any actual proof that Greg Miller is a murderer. In fact it appears to me he was convicted solely on the basis of circumstantial evidence. Oh, strong circumstantial evidence, I’ll grant you that—based mainly on what they found on the girl’s underclothes—but on the other hand, well, Greg and Janet were lovers, after all . . .”

  At which Forester’s involuntary groan was clearly audible; and despite that he had earlier acknowledged at least that much of the Necroscope’s obviously hurtful argument, still it seemed he might be about to reply—in anger or denial, whichever. But at that moment Jimmy Collins returned to the corner table, and his voice broke the momentarily charged lull:

  “Harry, it’s your round. But hey, if you’re busy I’ll get them in again and you can catch up later.”

  “No, it’s okay, Jimmy,” Harry replied, glancing up at him. “I’ll be right with you.” And as the other returned to the bar, so the Necroscope stood up, leaned on the table, and looked the constable straight in the eye.

  “Well?” said Forester, his voice uneven and breaking. “Are we done? We’d better be, because I’m not prepared to accept any more low, dirty blows.”

  “No more low blows.” Harry shook his head. “But one thing you should know. However it plays out—and I will be around to see it play out—I know for a fact there’s something weird and evil as hell in Hazeldene. Miller knows it, too; he’s searching for it, as I think you’re well aware. I’ll help him to find it, if that’s at all possible, because I think it will either condemn him as the madman you believe him to be, or finally set him free . . . by which I mean really free, not just from some prison cell. And Jack, who knows but it might even set you free, too.”

  Reaching for his glass and gradually slumping in his seat again, the constable remained silent, sullen, as Harry straightened up and made for the bar. Glancing back at him, seeing him withdraw into the corner’s shadows, the Necroscope had to feel more than a little sorry for him. . . .

  Mercifully, the evening was cooler than of late, with a velvety dusk falling as the pair got back to Jimmy’s house, where Harry went directly into the garden while his friend made coffee. Out there in the garden, Harry felt the strangeness, the mysterious texture of the darkening summer air. It always felt this way to him of a summer evening, and even more so in the autumn. It was hard to explain: a feeling or emotion he’d always thought of as “an awareness of darkness as a presence,” even as a friend. But he had never been more aware of darkness than right now, if for an entirely different reason: because what he intended to throw light upon, or into, wasn’t at all friendly, welcoming, or anything in which the Necroscope might ever wish to cloak himself. No, for while the shadowy corners of this familiar garden might be harmless and empty, a certain greater darkness out there was something else, and it harboured something darker still.

  Having twice sensed this thing in the near-distant forest, Harry knew where to “look”; the only difference this third time would be that he now knew it—whatever “it” was—could also sense him! Following his most recent effort, and aware now that the thing wasn’t about to offer itself up for any lengthy examination, he reasoned that if he intended to fix its latitude in his metaphysical mind he would have to be quick about it. Find the thing, retreat from it, erect his mental shields: the Necroscope’s plan was that simple. And tomorrow morning, in full daylight but from a different base, a spot to be chosen from farmlands to the north of the forest, he would employ the same plan to finally triangulate and so discover the thing’s co-ordinates, the source of those deceased but yet desperate deadspeak whisperers.

  It should have been no more difficult than that, but as he prepared himself for what was to have been a quite small effort of will, so Harry became aware of a faint but peculiar musk, an odour not unlike honeysuckle or certain night-blooming flowers, which he nevertheless found oddly . . . offensive? Or if not offensive, unsettling? It reminded him—but he didn’t know why—of rain, damp earth, and mould, and conjured to his unique mind vague but very disturbing half memories from earlier times that he couldn’t quite place, like those terrifying nightmares which go completely unremembered on waking. And such was the instantaneous effect of this depressing taint that suddenly Harry felt that what he was doing was of no consequence in comparison with the misery he was feeling. Why, was anything of consequence anymore? He very much doubted it. What an utter waste of time life really was, and—

  “Harry?” Jimmy Collins touched his arm, then jerked back a pace as the Necroscope gave a massive start. And: “Damn!” Jimmy cried aloud, arching his body away from the coffee that slopped from one of the mugs he was carrying. And angrily, “Now what in the name of . . . ?” But in the next moment he was conciliatory. “I mean, did I startle you or something?”

  “Yes,” said Harry. And: “No, my fault—sorry! I must have been daydreaming. And anyway, this has been a hell of a day for small, damp accidents! Did you get some on you? Hey, I’m sorry, Jimmy!”

  But he wasn’t sorry that Jimmy had come from the house and disturbed him, interrupting whatever had been happen
ing to him. And while as quickly as that he no longer remembered why he had felt so down, he remembered only too well something Jack Forester had told him: how sometimes, when he was in the fields near Hazeldene keeping an eye on Greg Miller, he would start to feel so very low that he really didn’t know why he was alive, or why he would want to be!

  And with that memory, almost as a reflex action—or maybe an instinctive, even a retaliatory one—Harry opened his mind to scan afar and to the west. The evening was cool but far from cold, so that the icy chill he felt as his probe touched momentarily upon . . . upon something other, something monstrous, which had even seemed to be waiting for him, was a chill of the soul rather than a physical thing.

  Repulsed, the Necroscope’s automatic, defensive retreat was even more immediate than his previous planning had called for! Even so there was time enough between the moments of recognition and withdrawal for Harry to feel the utter evil of an alien presence in the psychic aether, time enough to sense the vile satisfaction that the presence was unable to conceal: as if the darkness itself had smiled and licked its lips—

  —Perhaps in anticipation?

  Jimmy had already gone back into the house and so failed to see Harry’s involuntary shudder, the way he drew his elbows into his sides, hugging himself and trembling however briefly. In another moment the chill passed—likewise the sickly-sweet musk, fading away to nothing—and Harry was pleased to follow his friend inside. But closing the door behind him and shutting the darkness out, he wondered what had caused his weird adversary to generate such a huge burst of satisfaction, and to such a degree that he too had felt it.

  Some weakness in himself, perhaps? If so, and despite that the Necroscope’s resolve remained as unyielding as ever, it was scarcely reassuring. . . .