Necroscope: The Touch

  But somehow Scott didn’t think so. It wasn’t like any kind of barking he’d ever heard before. Neither warning, threat, nor challenge, it was more as if this animal was asking a question. The same vexed question over and over again.

  Well, it wasn’t the only one. Scott St. John had troubling questions of his own, too many of them. And stubbing his cigarette, he wound up his window, started the car, and backed out of Comber’s garden into the road . . .

  As Scott headed for home a now familiar thought—more properly a phrase or phrases—returned to haunt him:

  “If you sense anything strange, keep your distance but try to explore it. Think about what has happened to you—your loss—but think coldly, without anger, pain, or passion.”

  Well, he had sensed something strange, and while he wasn’t sure how well he’d kept his distance, he had certainly tried to explore it. But on the other hand, back there at Comber’s, he’d totally ignored his mystery woman’s words of warning until just before leaving. Passion? Oh, he had displayed plenty of that—though more out of sheer frustration than anger—while as for keeping his cool, well obviously that wasn’t his forte.

  But the girl, woman, mystery person had also said: “Don’t search for me. When it’s time I shall find you.” All very well, but when it was time for what? As far as Scott was concerned it was time right now—for whatever! And it was certainly time to have a closer look at Simon Salcombe. Or then again, maybe not. Maybe Salcombe was the one she’d warned him to stay away from.

  She, she, she! Scott would find her if he could, despite that she’d told him not to. For she had also admitted that she didn’t understand all of this herself, which surely meant that she understood some of it. Frustrating? The whole bloody thing just went around and around!

  When an oncoming car’s headlights momentarily blinded him, Scott wrenched his mind free of this fatiguing, endless enigma, this maze without an exit, and concentrated on his driving. He certainly wouldn’t want to get picked up again, not with whisky on his breath. But the thought of being picked up only reminded him of his . . . well, what could he call them? Kidnappers? Those Secret Service types? No, hardly that, not any longer. In fact, the more Scott thought about them the more he was reminded of a certain voice he thought he’d heard when he was standing before that two-way mirror in the police station.

  It had been her voice, of course, even though she herself wasn’t there. And when she’d said, “Don’t concern yourself with them,” he’d known she meant his Secret Service types. Moreover, Scott had even believed he could sense their presence somewhere close by. In which circumstances it was hardly surprising that he’d also believed he was losing it!

  But no longer. Scott knew he was somehow different from the man he’d once been—even radically different—but he wasn’t crazy. And he remembered how his mystery woman had assured him that there was no harm in those Secret Service types, that the harm lay elsewhere. But if only she’d said where . . .

  Scott was glad that he was almost home, for even above the sound of his car’s motor he could still hear that dog’s insistent barking! Now, pulling into his driveway, he brought the car to a halt and went to wind up his window—

  —Only to discover that it was already up! He’d wound it up before leaving Comber’s place. Then, as he turned the key in the ignition and the silence fell, Scott wondered, What the . . . ? Which in fact was him answering one question with another question . . . which in turn was what someone had wanted. And a very strange someone at that.

  For the barking had become something else entirely. It was still a dog’s voice, yes, except that now it made sense and was inside Scott’s head!

  When are you coming for me? said Three. Each day they hunt for me, and this place has become too dangerous. If you are The One you must come for me soon . . .

  Sitting motionless in the car—listening so intently that the silence pressed on him like a physical weight and his heart thudded with a pile-driver’s force—Scott shook like a leaf in a gale. He wasn’t afraid; he felt shock and astonishment, definitely, but it wasn’t fear. And it was no longer disbelief. This time he accepted what was happening. He accepted that while his ears heard the tick, tick, tick of his vehicle’s cooling motor, his mind heard something else entirely:

  Why are you silent? If you were The One you would hear and answer me!

  “I do hear you,” Scott finally whispered. “I can hear you! But . . . but I don’t know where you are!” He really didn’t know what else to say.

  Scott “heard” a vexed whining, a low growl, and sensed a single sniff at herb- and resin-laden air. Until finally: Then I must find a way to show you, said Three. But promise me that when next I call you will hear me. And:

  “Yes,” said Scott, nodding if only to himself, and however pointlessly. “Absolutely. Whatever you say.”

  With which Three sprang away and was gone—vanished from his mind, fled into the high, the wild, and to Scott the as yet unknown places—leaving him sitting in the car, alone with his whirling thoughts and tingling scalp . . .

  12

  Scott hadn’t been down into his compact cellar gymnasium since the day Kelly died. But needing the exercise, and badly in need of a good night’s sleep, he had decided on a thorough workout. He would work hard at it for as long as it took to wear himself out physically . . . as for mentally: no problem, for in that area he already felt exhausted! And after his workout he would take a cold shower before turning in.

  Stripped down to shorts and rubber-soled shoes, he worked on the weights, on the wall and parallel bars, and especially on the overhead beam, chinning himself until the muscles in his arms, shoulders, and neck felt like jelly, then easing off for a minute or two for fear of hurting himself. Then he went to work on the punch bag, which he also used as a kick bag, trying his best to kick and punch all of his pent-up frustrations (his “passions”?) right out of his system. At least for tonight.

  And while he worked at it for well over an hour—trying and testing his body, and using it in ways that he hadn’t possessed the will to use it in for some sixteen weeks—so Scott’s thoughts turned to what he had learned tonight. Not to his bizarre contact with an apparently telepathic dog, though he could hardly ignore it; neither to that nor to those other incredible events in which it appeared he had somehow become involved, but to something that for now he must continue to consider mundane by comparison and therefore accessible.

  And over and over again as he sweated it out, Scott found himself focusing on that single question that had now become one of the most important things in his world, his entire life:

  If a man—not one of faith and integrity but one who was vile and evil—if such a man’s hands were gifted with healing powers that enabled him to cure the sick, extending and improving life . . . might he not also be empowered to shorten and even destroy it? That was the question that Scott continually asked himself, even knowing that he could never ask it of any member of any orthodox medical profession.

  There were, however, other questions—allied but safer and more reasonably sane questions—that tomorrow he could put to the staff at St. Jude’s, and not least to the doctors at Kelly’s private hospital. He would, he simply must ask them, even if by involving himself, failing to remain “distant,” he went against the advice of his mystery woman.

  It was as simple as that: Scott couldn’t any longer remain distant (whatever that meant, and if it was what he’d been trying to do) for there were things he had to know.

  All of these thoughts and resolutions hurrying through his head as he began to climax his workout with a series of karate disciplines: whirling, falling flat and sweeping with his feet, rolling, leaping high and striking; then back to the punch bag, working on it until the leather was red and wet and his aching body dripped sweat and his torn knuckles dripped blood . . .

  But then, seeing the blood, Scott knew he had to stop. And dragging himself upstairs, it was time for his shower.

 
Scott dreamed of his father, Jeremy St. John, a true blue blood if ever there was one, and from a long line of the same. Jeremy had frequently declared that he’d married “beneath himself—to a girl with a pretty face and the morals of an alley cat.” This after discovering one of his wife’s affairs and divorcing her. The scandal had developed while Jeremy was serving at an embassy in the Far East. More complicated than a majority of marital breakdowns, his wife’s refusal to leave her lover and return to England had sealed her fate and destroyed her utterly. Not only had Jeremy washed his hands of her, he had marooned her, literally penniless, in Hong Kong. Following which he had done whatever was necessary to “live it down” and forget that she’d ever existed.

  At three years of age and with no say in the matter, Scott St. John had been obliged to do likewise and forget his mother. But it hadn’t been easy because he’d loved her. And four years later she had died a diseased alcoholic drug addict’s death in a Singapore opium den.

  As for Jeremy St. John: he had outlived her for more than two decades . . .

  And now, for the first time in his life, Scott walked with his father in a dream; at least one facet of which was the same as in his last awful nightmare of Kelly in the hospital: namely that Scott’s father didn’t seem capable of speech! It was as if he’d been struck dumb! Moreover, Scott somehow knew that he too was without voice, just as he’d been when he sat beside Kelly’s bed holding her hand. The urge to converse was there, but something prevented it: an invisible barrier standing between Scott and his father, just as it had between him and Kelly. And so he knew that this wasn’t simply familial disassociation.

  And despite that he preferred not to be reminded yet again of that revelatory dream, Scott felt obliged to reexamine it:

  Before her horrific collapse, Kelly, too, had been incapable of speech. She’d attracted Scott’s attention with her eyes, and with them directed him to the source of her problem, her wrist. Then she’d corroborated his understanding, not with words but a nod of her head. Similarly, Scott had made no sound—well, not until he’d started awake . . .

  And so now, knowing he was once again without voice, Scott contained his natural desire to speak (though weird as it felt, he sensed that he would be able to converse . . . just as soon as he learned how!). As if there were some medium in certain dreams that only permitted of conversation between those who knew its secret wavelength. And for now, since Scott was unfamiliar with this medium, his dream must remain devoid of sound . . . which in turn and for some reason reminded him of an old expression:

  “The silence of the tomb—”

  —And certainly of this graveyard, where he and his father walked. His father: a stiff, sombre man, in an expensive Savile Row pinstripe; but a man with blurred and unrecognizable features, mainly because Scott couldn’t remember, or didn’t want to remember, how he had looked. Yet now they walked together among the tombstones.

  Coincidentally, Scott’s Kelly was buried in this selfsame cemetery, but her plot lay to the south while Jeremy St. John’s lay to the north. That was where they were walking now, Jeremy and his son, toward his marker. Scott had visited him here on one occasion only; that had been enough; he hadn’t seen why he should spend time at the grave of a man who had never had much time for him. Indeed, the only thing Scott would ever have any reason to thank his father for was the pittance of a legacy he had bequeathed to him, which had let him complete the language studies that now furnished him with a living. That and nothing more. But there again, Scott’s father hadn’t by any means been rich when he died—his second wife had seen to that. For history repeats, and he had married “beneath himself” again—but this time to a spendthrift.

  And Scott just might have thought, Well good luck to her! Except even his thoughts were muted now; he couldn’t hear them in his head; it was as if his brain fired blanks . . .

  Anyway, so much for his father. Scott didn’t hate or even dislike him, he simply didn’t know him. Yet here in this misty evening graveyard he walked with him, without even knowing why. It was the way of dreams. They were ever mysterious, and Scott St. John’s dreams even more so.

  They had reached Jeremy St. John’s marker; Scott’s father stood with bowed head before it, while Scott seated himself on the raised pedestal and read the name, the dates, and the legend: “A Man of Manners, a Man of Breeding.” That was all. This would have been his father’s chosen epitaph, of course. But he probably wouldn’t have wished the same for Scott, whose mother had been “a woman with the morals of an alley cat.”

  And once again wondering why he was here, Scott looked at his father and saw something he’d never thought to see: tears, running down that mainly blank face! And even as he stared, so that face began to assume the angular features he had known as a child: the features of a proud, not unhandsome man—and one who had once loved him.

  So then, perhaps there had been that about Scott’s father which was worth remembering after all. Those oh-so-brief years of his love. While as for pride . . . of what use that to a dead man? And now:

  Jeremy St. John got down beside his son, pointed to those words on his stone, and traced them with his finger. He mouthed something; Scott heard nothing, but he saw what his father had traced—“A Man of Manners, a Man of Breeding”—and he also saw where he was now pointing: directly at Scott himself! And still crying, his father touched his own heart, shook his head, and denied his own epitaph. His meaning was obvious: Scott was the more mannered of the two, and while breeding was of little or no consequence without compassion, whatever Jeremy St. John had possessed of it, the best of it had carried down to Scott.

  Not all of this had been “said,” no, but Scott understood it anyway.

  And now, suddenly, his father embraced him, and Scott was surprised at himself that he allowed it!

  He allowed it, while suppressing the thought: Better late than never!—another old saw—which in any case the unknown medium smothered before it could take form in his head. And to complete Scott’s astonishment, he now found himself comforting his father and patting his shuddering back. And he felt rather than heard an oh-so-faint tremor coming right through the dead man’s chest . . . not only the sobbing, but words he would never have thought to hear (or even to feel) from Jeremy St. John:

  Son, I’m sorry! In turning my back on you because of your mother I did you wrong. It was my pride. Guilty of many things—but especially of my coldness toward you—I have lain here a long time, but without my pride. Guilty and knowing it, yes, but unable to ask for your forgiveness until now.

  Until now, when Scott couldn’t answer?

  Clutching his father more tightly yet and trying to force words from a throat with no vocal chords, Scott felt desperate in his need to console this poor man. But there was nothing he could do. He didn’t know the nature of the esoteric medium . . .

  There came an interruption; something called Scott, tugging at him. A cold wind blew and he fell against the headstone, which at once dissolved beneath him even as his father had dissolved! And where it had been evening, now in the east a silver thread heralded dawn in the sky over pale, amethyst-rimmed hills.

  The graveyard was gone; Scott smelled flowers rather than mould, and his sense of smell had never been more acute! There were many scents, several that he couldn’t put a name to along with others that he could. Aniseed, wild thyme, and pine resin, together with a salt tang off the sea. But what sea?

  And why was he viewing an unknown horizon from down among these coarse, spiky grasses?

  Because that is where I am lying on my belly, said Three. I called you and you came. It appears that you must be my One!

  Scott’s mind whirled. A wolf’s thoughts were in his head, and he saw and sensed this foreign place with a wolf’s senses! “I . . . I was dreaming,” he said, not knowing what else to say.

  You still are, said Three, but it is more than a dream, I know about dreams, for wolves dream, too. You are far easier to reach when you are dreaming. There
are no barriers.

  “Barriers?”

  Like dense woods and brambles—or steep cliffs and broad rivers—but all in your mind! Awake, you put up your barriers, which makes it far more difficult to reach you. Don’t you remember? How not so long ago I called out to you? I tried and tried to reach you but you failed to answer me. I had almost given up before you heard me.

  Scott nodded. “Yes, of course I remember. And I’m sorry if I have been difficult.” And then he looked around—but through a wolf’s eyes.

  The crack of silver light on the eastern horizon was brighter now and the dawn chorus was well under way.

  Scott (or his host) was lying on gritty soil on a hillside burgeoning with herbs and flowers. Below, cut into the hill and following its contours through wind-warped Mediterranean pines, a road ribboned away to a village some two or three miles distant. Almost every house and building in the village was painted blue and white, and was roofed with either fish-scale slates or terracotta pantiles. Set back from the village and climbing the slopes, olive groves were plentiful.

  The village nestled in a bay in the lee of the brightening hills, where the sea was dark blue against dark yellow beaches. This could be one of many places: Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey, the French Riviera. When the sun came up, Scott would be better able to decide.

  When the sun comes up, said Three, I shall be on my way to a cave in the high hills where the hunters can’t find me.

  “Hunters? In this day and age?”

  I’m a wolf of the wild, Three growled, as my father before me . . . before he found his Zek. I eat meat, and sometimes I grow weary of rabbits. But in the farms around they keep chickens. I like chickens, but the farmers do not like me. I carry metal in my tail where it is raw. (A wolf shrug.) It will heal in time.

  “You understand the principle of time?”

  The sun comes up, the sun goes down. That is time. I don’t know about principles.