Necroscope 9: The Lost Years (16 page)

Nor mine, not really. But I’ll do what I must.

And in doing so, lower yourself to the killer’s level?

Tell that to the dozen or more
he’s
lowered six feet under the sod!

I can’t give you my blessing,
the preacher shook an incorporeal head.

Give me access, that’s all I ask. Call of the others, for they’re doing no good and crowding me out.

It was true, Derek Stevens had them all in a state. Every single -inhabitant? - of the place, brought to the brink of what among the dead could only pass for nervous collapse. They knew no peace with him; they could neither converse nor hear themselves
think
for his noise; they flocked to him with gentle words, and the hardest of them with threats, but nothing they did brought surcease for he was inconsolable. To the world outside, the world of the living, the Muswell Hill graveyard would seem a hallowed place of peace and rest, but to the ones interred here it was now a Bedlam.

Wel,
Harry thought to himself,
Sir Keenan did try to warn me, after all.
But as he seated himself on a nearby slab the tumult fel off a litle, and as the teeming dead felt his presence, they drew back and made way for him. Then gradually, the incorporeal babble tailed off to a hiss of whispers, and finaly a welcome silence, as they waited.

Or almost a silence. For down there in the earth, unheard except by the dead and the Necroscope Harry Keogh, there was a sobbing. A heart not yet melted in corruption lay broken there, a soul with nowhere to flee suffered al the undeserved grief of the grave, and a mind bereft of control, cut off from man’s five earthly senses teetered on the brink of total insanity.

to the eye of memory, fleetingly, the Necroscope pictured an

illustration from some old book (perhaps the idea of Bedlam had brought it back to mind): of a man lying in a foetal position on a bed of filthy, vermin-infested straw over broken flagstones, with gaunt, drooling, holow-eyed figures shambling to and fro, aimlessly al around. Add to that scene al the protests and the pleading and even the threats of the Great Majority, and Harry couldn’t help wondering: is that what it’s like for Derek Stevens?

To the teeming dead, the unguarded thoughts of the Necroscope were perfectly audible. And:

Yessss!
Stevens sobbed, and huddled to Harry in his mind, crushing to him for his living warmth!

Any other man would have recoiled at once. To be embraced, even in one’s mind, by a corpse, isn’t a thought to dwel upon. But Harry was the Necroscope, and the dead were his friends. He could no more shrink from Stevens in his grave than from a sick friend in a hospital ward. And so he instinctively wrapped the dead man in his warmth, and let him leech on it a while … but briefly, for something warned him not to let himself succumb to the other’s incurable chil.

But as he drew away:

No! Don’t go! Who are you?
What
are you? A nurse? A doctor? You’re alive, I know that, because you’re warm. I can
feeljyowr
warmth!

But the others in this …
place,
they’re cold! So tell me, tell me, tell me … you’ve
got
to tell me they’re lying! I have to know that
I… that I’m … aliiiive!
Right at the end it turned to a wail, a sobbing shriek that sank down as if into the earth from which it issued.

‘I’m
alive, yes,’ Harry spoke out loud, however quietly now, which was easier for him and made no difference at al to the Great Majority. ‘But this …
isn’t
a hospital, Derek. I’m Harry Keogh, the one they cal the Necroscope, and sometimes I wish I wasn’t. This is one of those times.’ There was no other way to do it. His words spoke volumes, told far more than he’d said, but even in his ears they sounded like a betrayal.

Nooooo!
The dead man’s wail denied it.
My parents, wife, family, friends. My whole wooooorld!… Gone?
But this time the final word was a whisper.

‘Not gone,’ Harry’s face was wet with his own tears, and his voice rang with his own agony. They’re still there, Derek, everything, everyone. They have accepted what you can’t accept. Because they saw, felt, touched you, and knew that they had to give you up. Their living senses made them to know that yours … don’t work any more.’

The sobbing had stopped now, and for long moments there was only a stunned, breathless silence. It was as if the dead held their breath, waiting for Derek Stevens to gather his, a renewal of his crazed raving. The Necroscope sensed it coming, and stopped it short:

‘I can tell them you’re okay now,’ he said. ‘Your family, your friends,

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Jim Banks and George Jakes. I’m the only one who can tell them. I can make it easy for them, reassure them, give them strength to carry on. Even those last two, who like yourself
can’t
carry on, and have accepted it. Or I can say nothing at all. Or … I can tell them you’re like this. But I’d really hate to do that, and leave them in the same sort of hell, going mad with worry over you … ”

There couldn’t be a ‘same sort of hell,’ not remotely!
The dead man answered at last. But now there was that in his incorporeal voice that hadn’t been there before, so that Harry felt like an inquisitor, as if he’d issued a threat or attempted to coerce the other.
But you did!
Stevens told him, with something of a sneer.
You threatened a dead man!

So much for the ‘mercy’ of the Necroscope! And if that was a lie, what about the rest of the bullshit they’ve been feeding me?

At which Harry relaxed a little, and perhaps^even smiled to himself through his tears. The word-game he was playing was going his way at last. And: ‘You’re not crazy, Derek,’ he told the other. ‘Not if you can still reason as well as all that!’

Crazy?
The other seemed surprised.
Was I supposed to be?
His voice was still bitter, but Harry sensed that he had definitely turned back from the brink.
Mad with grief, sure,
(just as the preacher had said).
Tortured by frustration,
naturally. But I wasn’t crazy. Bull-headed, that’s all: a bad loser, and unwilling to give up on a lost cause or
argument. Well, hell, I’ve
always
been that way!

Of course. And how he’d always been in life was how he’d be in death. But even the worst loser must accept the verdict when he’s finally down and out.

Harry felt the soft sighing of the dead, for
this
was an argument that was definitely going his way now. Except, as the Necroscope was well aware, it wouldn’t go down well if he stuck the boot into an underdog. One should always leave a bolthole, so that the gallant loser may retire with grace. And so:

‘Well, and you’ll win this one, too, in the end,’ he said, however casually.

Eh? How’s that?
(Stevens was ‘back on his feet’ again, the sob gone from his voice forever. It was the prospect of winning when all had seemed lost. But how could everything be lost when he was still here, still fighting?)
What? I can still win?

‘Can and will,’ Harry assured him. ‘Because in the end … why, we’ll all be in the same hole! Everyone, eventually.’

What?
(Wonderingly).

‘Death is a hell of a long time,’ Harry explained. ‘You’ve lost nothing, Derek. Or at worst, your situation is a temporary one. But everything and everyone you’ve said goodbye to, you’ll be saying hello to in some distant future. Except by then, why, you may not want to!’

Not want to?
(Astonishment!) /
won’t want to be reunited with—

‘—You’ll get
old,
Derek, and so will they. You’ll be old in the ways of death, and them old in the physical sense. Which is something you won’t have to suffer. They’ll have new friends and be … different. And so will you. But who knows, who can say? Maybe they’ll be
like
you, as rebellious as you have been, and need you to show them the way when finally

… finally they get here. Just as the dead will show you the way, if you’ll let them.’

/
can have new friends?

‘Even old ones! Jim Banks isn’t that far away. You should be able to talk to him, if you’ll just reach out.’

Have I been … selfish?

‘No, just scared. And you scared the dead, too, because now and then they lose someone like you. Now and then, someone will retreat so far into his misery that he’s permanently lost. They thought you were going that way, too, Derek.’

And so they called you in …

Harry shook his head. ‘I didn’t come to help you, but to
ask
for your help! Just as Jim Banks has helped me, and George Jakes too, I hope.’

Jim, George, and me …
Now the dead man knew what it was all about, what it had to be about, and Harry felt his excitement.
Now that really would be a way to finish a fight, right? To hit back from the grave! So what do you want to know?

Harry told him, and what little there was he got: from a seat in the front row, as usual…

Afterwards, when the Necroscope had said goodbye to Derek Stevens and was leaving the cemetery:

Harry,
said the preacher,
that was just… marvellous! And you really do know how to argue, don’t you?

Told you so,’ said Harry. ‘But in fact I had an advantage over you. I knew something you couldn’t know.’

Oh?

‘It was something I saw written on his gravestone, something that had been put there by people who knew Derek better than either one of us. It said he was “a fighter to the last.” Except, as we’ve seen, the fight isn’t over yet… ”

The Necroscope had to make one more visit. And this time it was a venue and a meeting that he wasn’t looking forward to at all: the police mortuary in Fulham, where George Jakes lay gutted on a slab waiting for him. For it’s one thing to talk to the dead, but something else to converse with a mangled mess that simply isn’t recognizable any more and smells of the blood, guts, and shit that used to lie
under
the skin!

Harry steeled himself to it, however, and on the way told his esper friends what Derek Stevens had told him: Brian Lumley

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‘Less than Banks, I’m afraid. When Banks was hit, Stevens didn’t automatically tie it in to what Banks had been investigating. Banks had been onto a gang of car-thieves, yes, but he had been killed by some maniac who was perhaps responsible for a whole string of previous murders. Maybe Banks had been doing some work on those, too?

The only thing Stevens was certain of was that Banks had a lead on this East End garage. And he knew it was a job he had been keen to finish. So Stevens waited and watched, and got together and made plans with George Jakes. And because Stevens and Jakes had had close friendships with Banks, the investigation of Banks’s murder was passed to another, more ‘impartial’ team. Not that there was any real impartiality; a policeman had been murdered, and the police are clannish about that kind of thing. Anyway, Stevens and Jakes were out of it.

‘But
if
there was some connection between Banks’s murder and his theory about the garage and his auto-theft case, Stevens reckoned business would fal off a bit now; the gang would keep a low profile until they saw which way the wind blew. In which case it would be pointless to raid the garage right now, for the place would be “clean.”

‘And in fact, over the next three weeks to a month, there
was
a noticeable fall-off in reported car-theft. But that could be coincidental, and Stevens still couldn’t tie Banks’s murder to the suspect garage. In a month, however, the moon had waned and waxed anew; toward the end of that period the incidence of vehicle theft had risen again; the taking of a couple of Porsches clinched it, and a raid on the garage was on … and the moon was nearing its ful.

‘Meanwhile, Stevens and Jakes had looked the place over. A rundown, multi-storey ex-municipal car park, the garage was huge and decrepit, a concrete skeleton. Upstairs it was a gutted ruin; only the ground floor and basement were still viable, and housed the garage proper. Access, however, was by no means easy. There were no windows on the ground floor and one of the two old entrance/exits had been blocked off. The remaining entranceway onto the disused ramps was controlled by a manned barrier and a motorized, steel-ribbed, retractable overhead door. There was no natural light in the work areas, only electrical, and the only visitors allowed inside were clients whose vehicles were in process of repair. A search-warrant was vital.

‘But in the course of looking the place over, Stevens and Jakes had experienced the same kind of invasion suffered by Jim Banks: something, or one, had got into their minds! But a feeling so “strange, unnatural, weird, that neither one of them more than mentioned it to the other! Maybe they suspected they might be cracking up a little -certainly Stevens felt shaky about it - but neither one of them made too much of it, not to his partner, anyway. In fact Derek Stevens put it down to an attack of nerves, and to the loss of Jim Banks. But I’ve

spoken to both of them now, and I know that their symptoms were exactly the same.

This wolf-thing, a self-designated lycanthrope, was into their minds. Maybe he’d been alerted by their giving the garage the once-or twice-over in preparation for their raid. Whatever, it never got that far …

‘Five nights ago, a day before the full moon, Stevens was driving home from work on wet roads through a thin drizzle. He stopped at a red light controlling road-works at a bridge over a railway … but the truck following right behind him didn’t! The only warning he got was that
Thing
in his mind, an obscene chuckle, and a gurgling mental voice that told him: “Kiss your asshole goodbye, fuckhead!” Followed by a howling, like a madman trying to imitate a wolf.