And turning to the couple—or more properly to the girl—he asked: “Does that sound about right to you, miss? Or perhaps you’d prefer to let everyone know what you were really doing in the woods?”
She tilted her chin at him. “We’re not ashamed of being in love, Mr. Keogh!” But then—glancing sideways at Alex Munroe, and seeing the way he nodded his head pointedly—she went on: “Still . . . your suggestion is probably for the best, er, Harry? And we’re very glad you were here to save us a second time!”
Following which they found their way out of there into the cool clean air of the nearby fields. . . .
“What was that thing?” Munroe asked of no one in particular, as the five stood well back from the action, watching fire engines arriving and their crews scrambling to tackle the fire, a blaze that would yet go on to destroy more than two and a half acres.
“It was something alien,” the Necroscope answered him. “It lured you into the forest, to a spot where it could do its evil work and remain unseen, unknown. It was a very ancient thing—as old as the hills and the last of its kind—a horror out of time that could either scare you off or draw you into its trap, then put you to sleep and kill you. Or maybe it would cause you to kill yourself!” With that last, he glanced knowingly at Jack Forester.
“Old Arnold Symonds?” The constable knew it was so.
“I think so, yes,” said Harry.
Forester nodded. “And I might have been another victim. It doesn’t bear thinking about.”
And Greg Miller, far more in control of himself now, said: “I might have killed myself, too. Probably would have, except I think I was mainly immune to the monster’s influence. It was my hatred kept me immune; I wasn’t about to kill myself until I at least tried to kill it first! But you know, I think it may even have grown to recognise my presence? I felt it was playing some kind of game with me!”
Pointing at a near-distant vehicle kicking up dust along a dirt track, Gloria Stafford said, “I think that’s the ambulance coming now.”
And Harry asked her, “Have you two got your story right?”
Alex Munroe answered for both of them: “We were out walking, went to investigate a column of smoke in the woods and saw the fire. We panicked, stumbled into a large bramble patch, and so on and so forth.”
“I’ll never again feel safe in the shade of a tree,” said the girl. “And I know that I’ll always have nightmares.”
“That goes for me too.” Munroe put an arm around her, drew her close. “But when the nightmares come we’ll always have each other.” And she smiled at him, however wanly.
“That’s it then,” said Forester. “It’s over.”
Miller simply nodded, and Harry agreed, saying, “It would seem so, yes.” And that was that . . .
_____
. . . At least until the young lovers had been driven away, when it became plain there was that on Miller’s mind which had been there for quite some time. For suddenly he turned to the Necroscope and asked: “Who are you, Harry? Not just your name but—I don’t know—something else? I mean, who are you really?”
And Constable Jack Forester was quick to agree: “Yes, I’ve felt the same way about you ever since I first laid eyes on you dealing with that pair of local ne’er-do-wells. So who are you, Harry?”
“I’m nobody important,” said the Necroscope. “I just know some things, that’s all. You could say I feel things that other people don’t. It’s what I do. And sometimes it works out right, like this time. I mean, if I can help people, ease their minds, that’s enough.” But more especially if they’re dead people, who need all the breaks they can get and all they’ve got is me.
But: “No,” said Miller and Forester almost as one. And the policeman followed it up with: “I’m sure you’re a lot more than that—but I’m damned if I can figure out what!”
And Greg Miller said, “I suppose we’ll just have to let it go, like everything else that’s happened today. But anyway, who or whatever you are, you have my thanks, Harry.”
“Mine too,” said the constable, nodding. . . .
When the Necroscope was on his own he spoke to his mother, who already knew much of what had happened. She’d heard it from the newcomers, of course, who were now firmly incorporated into the Great Majority.
That’s a very wonderful thing that you’ve done, Harry, she said. But you did put yourself in danger . . . again! Harry could sense her incorporeal frown.
“You would have done the same, Ma,” he told her. “You know you would, if you were able. And of course, we now know why you couldn’t find any information on the girl: she just wasn’t with you—she hadn’t joined the Great Majority—couldn’t, because she was trapped inside that thing along with all the others.”
Still sensing his mother’s frown, however, and before she could further upbraid him, the Necroscope quickly went on: “Ma, I won’t argue with you; I’m simply asking after your newcomers, that’s all. Because some of them were caught up with that creature for a very long time.”
Yes they were, she replied, and they suffered greatly. But the oldest of them—who should have moved on to higher places long ago—they have already caught up and passed on. Thanks to you, Son, all thanks to you.
“Not all of it,” Harry answered, shaking his head, humbled in the presence of his mother and the teeming dead. “I had help this time: Greg Miller. And anyway, I wasn’t looking for praise, Ma.”
Oh, we know you weren’t, Son, she told him, but still her deadspeak “voice” was full of pride.
“What of the girl, Janet?” Harry inquired.
She’s with her father now, the Necroscope’s Ma replied. We forgave him a long time ago for what he did, for he was in such pain, poor man. We frown on suicide, as you know; for if anyone knows how precious life is, it’s surely the Great Majority! But we accepted him anyway. What else could we do? He was so . . . so disturbed. But now that they’re together, we believe he’ll be a lot better.
Harry knew she would sense his nod when he said, “Yes, and it really wasn’t his fault. Well, not entirely and probably not at all. Arnold Symonds was made to do what he did by that thing in the forest. You do understand that now, don’t you?”
Indeed we do, she answered. So you needn’t any longer feel concerned, Son. Not about anything. All’s well that ends well.
And with that, feeling satisfied and fulfilled, the Necroscope nodded and went his lonely way. . . .
Harry and the Pirates
On this dreary mid-September day, Harry Keogh, Necroscope, was back in the graveyard in the old steelworking and shipbuilding town of Hartlepool, only seven or eight miles from the village on England’s north-east coast where he had grown up in the care of a kindly aunt and uncle. However, to speak of Hartlepool in terms of steel and ships alone—terms more in keeping with an extinct but comparatively recent industrial past—while ignoring its rather more antique historical background, would be to do it an injustice. Indeed, for there’s far more to this hoary old place than that.
In fact, in the town’s most venerable quarter—in a small, weathered harbour lying leeward of the blustery spit that features as Hartlepool’s most northerly point—the Necroscope had earlier talked to a Viking, a seafaring reaver who in his time had known the place as “Hjartapol.” Known it, attacked it, and on several occasions even sacked it . . . but once too often.
Erik Haroldson—who was once called “Scarhelm” after the great white blaze of an axe gouge over his right eye—had told Harry:
Aye, and Scardaborg, too,—which Harry had understood to mean modern Scarborough—and many another seaport along these shores, wherever we fancied were riches and fat juicy women! We raided ’em all! Why, the mere sight of a krakenship would cause panic: the wild flight of so many paleblood cowards that entire villages were deserted, left for us to sack! We were feared far and wide, from tip to toe of this entire eastern coast and even north of the Great Wall [Hadrian’s Wall]. We raided around the norther
n point [the Pentland Firth], and south down the western flank as far as fair winds and our oars would take us. Hah! Did you think men called us “Varyargi” [voyagers] for nothing, Necroscope? We sailed wherever we desired to sail, and neither man nor scaly sea beast to say us nay!
A boastful, swaggering speech that was quite obviously intended to impress. But:
“Well, evidently someone must have said you nay,” Harry had answered him, and then deliberately yawned, “else I wouldn’t be perched on this damp sea wall right now, bored nigh unto death, listening to your braggart’s stories, while your drowned, crab-eaten bones lie buried in muck all of three fathoms deep in the harbour!”
This was very unusual for the Necroscope, who had obviously “got out of the wrong side of bed” this morning, as they say in those parts; for when conversing with the dead, Harry was normally the soul of compassion. Or perhaps it was just that he was weary and disillusioned. For in fact he was searching for someone—indeed two someones—one of whom he had loved, and one other he would have liked to know better and perhaps learned to love, but once again as so often before he’d failed to discover even the slightest trace of them. It was as if they had disappeared right out of this world.
As to why he’d searched here:
. . . Some years earlier Harry and his true love—his sweetheart from pre-teen times who had later become his wife—they had used to come here, walk all the way along the coal-streaked sandy shore from Harden to Old Hartlepool, then catch the coast road double-decker bus back home. Such a long walk might occupy an entire day, but it would also provide an opportunity to make love amongst the grass-topped sand-dunes; just such a love-making event as had got her pregnant. Then had come Harry’s transition into the Necroscope—and into someone frightening, whom Brenda had considered a stranger—following which she and the infant had simply, or perhaps not so simply, gone away.
Now when time allowed Harry would search for her. Which was how he had ended up there, on the old harbour wall in that most ancient part of town: partly out of nostalgia but mainly in the hope—albeit a hope that was slowly but surely being eroded—that he might yet find something of Brenda and his son in these familiar haunts. No such luck, however, and on top of his disappointment the Necroscope had somehow got himself caught up in conversation with the long-dead, boastful, callous, and entirely unrepentant Viking Erik “Scarhelm” Haroldson.
His thoughts had been plainly “audible” to the dead Viking, of course—and to his crew, who had gone down with him—and Erik had been somewhat taken aback.
I had heard it rumoured that you were a friend of the dead, he’d growled in Harry’s mind. Yet here you mock my cold, watery grave and call me names! If I had life I do not think you would be so careless with your comments.
“Bah!” the Necroscope had answered, scornfully. “If you and yours had lived your lives in this time, in my time, Erik, it’s more than likely the gallows would have got you; or at the very least you’d be locked up for life! We don’t any longer tolerate barbarians in my world, ‘Scarhelm.’ ” Which wasn’t entirely true or accurate; but in addition and for emphasis, Harry tossed his head and offered a deliberately scathing “Huh!”
Why . . . you . . . you! The Viking choked and spluttered while his crew roared with laughter, the same crew whose longship had gone up in flames beneath their feet, leaving them to jump overboard and drown, tangled up in the hurled, weighted nets of the town’s brave fishermen; a dead crew, of course, who would never have dared to laugh at their chief in that bygone age when they had known life. And:
Damn you to hell, Necroscope! cried the Viking.
“And who knows?” Harry had answered. “Why, I might even end up there! But as for you, ‘Scarhelm’—I know one or two things about death, and I can tell you this: it’s unlikely such as you will ever get to see Valhalla! For after all, what were you for all your bluff and bluster? A pack of scurvy sea-wolves, that’s all. A gang of bloodthirsty, cutthroat pirates!”
At which:
Ahhhh! A previously unheard voice had sighed in Harry’s unique metaphysical mind, apparently in some distress. But what a shame, Necroscope, that you’d call such as that one a “pirate.” For if he is a pirate, what does that make me? Am I also out of favour, who have done and said nothin’ hurtful to you? In which case a great shame indeed; for I am assured by a mutual acquaintance that, havin’ been somethin’ of a storyteller in your own right, you love a good tale. And indeed I have just such a tale to tell, that is if you don’t mind talkin’ to a “pirate.” But a real pirate, mind you, or more properly a privateer, remote not only in time but also in breedin’ from the Viking scum who long since turned to slop in yon harbour’s bilges.
Eh? What’s that you say? roared Erik Haroldson. For having heard something of what this unknown other had said through the Necroscope’s mind, he felt doubly insulted. Moreover and worse, he sensed Harry’s attention wandering away from him and knew it would be a while—if ever, or more likely never—before any living man would stop to talk to him again. Wherefore:
What? he continued to bluster. Do you keep a dog to do your barking, Harry? And one with a “tale” to wag at that? Hah! Take my advice, Necroscope: curb this yappy pirate pup and listen to me. Aye, for I’ve many a tale of my own to tell—of the storm and the sea and the sacking of cities—and songs that will yet be sung in Valhalla! For as you can see, I have the kenning and use it well.
But knowing that the Viking would sense the action, Harry shook his head. “You may have the kenning, Erik,”—meaning the style and poetry of the old Norse sagas—“but a bully’s bluff and bluster is your real forte. And as for Valhalla: doesn’t it puzzle you that you’re not there yet? A thousand years gone by, and you’re still here, stuck in the mud, unclaimed? It seems to me fairly obvious: there isn’t a single Valkyrie who would lend a hand to such as you. For while I’m sure that there were proud Vikings, some middling Vikings, and a few not so great Vikings, I’m also pretty sure that you must have been one of the poorest of them all! And I’ve no longer any interest in you.”
With which he shut the furious Erik out and turned his attention to the newcomer, a self-confessed pirate whose deadspeak voice issued from a source some small distance away. “You said we had a mutual acquaintance?”
Oh, indeed! that one answered. He offered advice on contactin’ you, and explained how you had promised to return and talk to him from time to time. All I must do was wait until you were closer, he said, and then I too would be able to address you. I see now, however, that you’ve no time for fools, as witness the abrupt dismissal of the Viking. Well, that makes two of us, and I pray you will accept my word for it that I’m not wastin’ your time.
The Necroscope was intrigued. “And this mutual acquaintance told you I was . . . how did you put it, a storyteller?” Just for a moment Harry’s eyes narrowed speculatively—then opened wide in sudden understanding. And finally he smiled.
“A-ha! And he also told you I’m a good listener, did he? In which case I think I know him. He was a serial womaniser in his own time, a seventeenth-century rakehell who related his sexual adventures to me so that I could write them up into a sensational novel, a so-called ‘fictional’ account. The son of an earl—and the black sheep of his family who eventually cast him out—his life was cut tragically short when an outraged husband shot him through the heart. But I never heard him complain about it; I get the feeling he thinks he got his just desserts! And taking into account certain of the things he’s told me, so do I! Let’s face it: he was hardly a pillar of the community, now was he? I mean, he was an utter scoundrel!”
Harry paused, and then—aware that the other was following his every word and action—shrugged before finishing off with: “But what the heck, we’re friends for all that. . . .”
You have him dead to rights, Necroscope! said the other. He was a likeable rogue, Henry Thomas Buckfast . . . even a scholar, however, er, debauched? That’s if you’ll permit a mere “pirat
e” an observation of that sort. Of disparate social origins, Henry and me, still we lived in the same era and lay dead in the same cemetery; that much at least we had in common, for which I know I shall miss him. . . .
“What?” Suddenly the Necroscope was frowning. “What’s that you say?” Surprise and dismay were apparent in a voice that the pirate “heard” as deadspeak, which frequently imparts much more than the spoken words. “You mention him in the past tense, saying you’ll miss him? Isn’t he any longer there, then? But wait!—we needn’t talk across a distance like this—I know exactly where you are and can come to you.”
Turning up his collar against rain that came suddenly, in a squall off the sea, the Necroscope climbed down from the weathered granite of the sea wall, hurried across the cobbled street and took cover under the arch of a recessed door in the wall of a centuried grey stone building. And without pause, all unseen, there he employed esoteric Möbius formulae to conjure a door of his own.
The transfer was instantaneous as he crossed the threshold, stepping from the harbour’s dreary light into darkness absolute—that of the metaphysical Möbius Continuum—and out into the familiar co-ordinates of an almost equally dismal cemetery under cover of a buttressed pier in a high stone wall. It was a sorry place on days like this, this ancient graveyard that Harry knew so well, but—
—Still and all, he congratulated himself, however wryly, at least it isn’t raining!
And so the Necroscope came to be in this place of so many memories: a host of them from his years of study at the technical college in the heart of the town, perhaps a mile away, and many more from his time—his far-too-short time—married to Brenda, when they’d lived together . . . just over there.
Moving out onto a pathway, he shook droplets from his coat, turned down its collar, looked up and over the wall, back across the street at the three-storied Victorian house where once he’d lived in the converted garret. He had enjoyed writing his short stories there in that tiny flat; or rather, writing the stories of . . . well, other people: tales they could no longer write for themselves. The stories of dead people, yes. Harry’s friends . . .