Necroscope 9: The Lost Years (20 page)

‘course you does! Why, this thing you’re doing right now is … well, it’s obeah, right? Black magic! Obi! Those
islands is still full of it, I hear. Whole regimes has risen and fallen on it! But more of it when A. C. and me was kids. It
came with the black folks out of Africa, you know? The preacher used to say that obi was born in sin and bred in ignorance, and
didn’t have no place in a God-fearing world. But I always figured he was more a-feared of obi than God!

Except, Poppy’s obi was
gentle
stuf, for protection more than anything else. I mean, Poppy wouldn’t a harmed a soul! He was just happy
with his charms and love-potions, and never once messed with poisons or dead folks-I mean the zombies, Harry, begging your
pardon! Protection, yeah! But Poppy did have something more than the simple stuf, and he coulda used it to make himself a big man.

Why, whole governments have balanced on such as this, in Haiti and the Indies! Yeah! For Poppy had the power to
look into a enemy’s mind, and so know his every move.

Why, it was even better than that: he simply
knew
it when he came up against a bad one! This thing of his would kick in; right
away he’d be reading any bad or dangerous thoughts aimed in his direction.
And
he’d know who was aiming them! Not that it
happened too often, you understand, ‘cos Poppy didn’t have no enemies.

There was special times when Poppy would practise his obi, and the full of the moon was one of them. We had a little house and garden
sheltered by the clifs in a corner of a shingle bay near Port dePaix on the south coast. We kept a few chickens, a pig or two, and
there was plenty offish in the straits between Haiti and Tortue Island. What with green stuff out of the woods and the
garden, we didn’t do too badly at all. But as Poppy got older and A. C. grew up, I’d keep getting this feeling that my little brother wasn’t
satisfied. There was a whole wide world to play in, and our garden by the beach wasn’t big enough …

We’d creep on up Poppy at full moon time. He had what he called his ‘obeah house: it was just a wooden shack at the end of
the garden, where mostly he’d sit on a old rocker and tilt a jug. But sometimes he’d burn

herbs, mutter a spell or two, turn in a circle and scan all around, to ‘feel’ what was going on in the world. And the
next day we’d have chicken for dinner, ‘cos he’d a used a bird in his practice. But if he’d catch us spying on him, my,
how he’d fly into a rage then! Obi was something he didn’t want us having
nothing
to do with! And he’d get me on my own and
say:

‘ You has a good aura. Robert, you is chocolate - which is to say, you’s a natural thing. As a forest is green, and a fish is silver,
you is chocolate. Like a log is brown, and the sky’s blue, and the sea’s deep green down under,
you
is the colour of your
soul, too. But son, I tell you your brother is dark. And I mean darker than just his skin! But Arthur’s young and that can
change - better had, too, else there’s no good ending for him! Except I knows I won’t be here to look out for him, so I got to leave
all that to you. You is his brother, after all.’ And that was me stuck with it. Not that I minded much, not then …

But come the time A. C. was seventeen, I was a full-time working man and didn’t have a lot of spare time for him.

Poppy was on his
very
last legs; in fact, I couldn’t see how the Old Boy was still hanging in there! And my brother…

well, he be just a handful!

There was this girl in trouble in Port de Paix (not that
that
meant a hell of a lot, ‘cos she had something of a reputation
anyways), and A.C. was smoking a lot of the wrong stuf. Also, I suspected he was big in a gang on the wrong side of the law. And you got
to remember, Harry, The Law out there in them days wasn’t the same as here in England! No sir! Men was dying for their political beliefs, or
just disappearing of the face of the earth, which amounted to much the same thing. But worse than these things, I also figured
A.C. was doing some obeah, or trying to do it, anyways.

I spoke to Poppy’bout it, and he said, ‘Son, it’s what I feared. The blood will out. Obeah’s in my blood, and in you and your
brother’s blood, too. Except I knows that if A. C. gets it he’ll use it wrong. But I also knows that you is there to block him. So long as you is
alive my obeah’s split two ways, between you and your brother. So wherever he goes,
whatever
he does, be there to square it with the Powers
That Be. I mean, the powers that govern obi. Just
be
there, and Arthur won’t have full command of his skills. But son, I feel I
has to tell you this … your brother is strong in obeah. I has known it for, oh, many a long year. I reckon it’s why I
hangs on: ‘cos I know he doesn’t come fully into his own till I is passed on …’

Now Harry, that’s a night I’ll remember always, ‘cos when I was leaving the Old Boy be in his obeah house, I saw a shadow
sneaking away along the garden, and that shadow was shaped like my brother … Wel, Poppy died a few days later, all curled up like an old
leaf and clutching his belly as if he ate something that didn’t agree. I had my suspicions, but God, I couldn’t see A.C.

doing that! I just couldn’t…!

A couple years went by, and Poppy was right: his obi came down to me and A.C. But as I said before, I got a little and my
brother got a lot - and all of what he got, bad!

Brian Lumley

100

Necroscope: The Lost Years - Vol. I

101

A.C. was nineteen and wanted by The Law. Not for any thing you could specify; mainly for being against the so-caled ‘authorities.’ If they’d got him he was a
goner for sure, and A.C. knew it. That alone was enough to turn him against any kind of genuine authority from that time on. He wanted to smuggle himself out
of the country, and he had the contacts to do it. Al he needed was papers, which weren’t hard come by to someone who could do a few favours, some obi tricks for
folks, to get them. And he got papers for me, too.

See, I minded my promise to Poppy, that 1 would go along with A. C. wherever he went, and watch him whatever he did. He
was
my little brother, after al. So
we came to England. I suppose we was illegal immigrants, since our papers were faked and al; anyway, they never did catch us. Luck - and obeah - were with us.

And there’s a lot of island folk over here, you know? There’s always someone who be ready, willing, and able to protect an obi man. I suppose I was looked after

‘cos people liked me, and A.C. ‘cos … ‘cos they feared him.

But trouble folows trouble, Harry, and here in UK, A. C. just couldn’t keep his nose out of it, same as back home. Black gangs and what al, pilfering, drugs …

he was just a bad lot; he was into everything! I would a given up on him for sure, but for my promise to Poppy. And I knew that he’d be a lot worse if I wasn’t
there to keep a balance. But it seemed my.obi balanced his and kept him out of trouble. Wel, out of the worst kind of trouble, anyways.

‘Ventualy we fell apart. I had me a job, a good one, too, and there was a girl… but never mind ‘bout that.

One night A. C. came around to my place, and he’d had too much to drink. Said he wanted to talk. Wel you know how drunks ramble. But there’s rambling and
rambling. My brother was looking at me sort of strange and breathing slow and heavy. And you know, Necroscope, I couldn’t help but remember that night when
Poppy told me about the balance between our obis, and how A. C. Doyle Jamieson wouldn’t come into his own while Poppy was still alive; and how even then
there ‘d be me to steer a path for him. And I admit I thought: ‘ Wel, looks like A.C.’s about ready to start steering his own path!’ and I thought: ‘This boy wants
my obi, too!’

Anyways, I asked him what was the trouble, and he told me the leader of another gang was after his skin. But A.C. could only catch a ‘glimpse’ of this boy every
now and then. I mean, an obeah glimpse, you know? Like when Poppy knew that a enemy was after him? But this was serious stuff, and A.C. needed to know this
guy’s every move. But he couldn’t, ‘cos
my
obeah was blocking his! And I had heard ‘bout this boy and knowed he was real bad stuff.

Wel, like a fool I told A.C. I’d rein back on it, and I did just that. I hadn’t given my obi hardly a thought since my talk with Poppy, but now I concentrated on
clearing the way for A.C. It weren’t nothing physical, al

in the mind. I just quit from giving of obi. 1 figure you knows what I’m talking ‘bout, Necroscope, ‘cos you be like that. But… oh,
I had bad dreams for a couple nights, ‘til A.C. came to see me again.

And by then it’s been the time of the full moon, obi time, and I has seen in the papers how this other guy is dead and all tore up. And here’s my
brother, A.C. Doyle Jamieson, on top of the world, not like when I last saw him; ‘cept
just
like before I couldn’t believe that of him, not of my
brother. But just in case, I lets my obi flow again; I send it out of me not just to guide but to
counter
Arthur! And he
knows /
done it, o’ course.

How? ‘Cos he picked up on.a enemy - me!

Wel, a month went by … it was full moon time again … and after that… I mean it was then that… Harry, I was out of it! But don’t ask me to
tell you ‘bout it, ‘cos I won’t. Andyou already had it from the others. And it’s
because
you had it from them that I knows it were Arthur. See, the
way it happened to them is how it happened to me. Just exactly. So in the end I has to face up to it; but like I always tells myself, A. C.
was
my
brother, after all…

‘You will know, of course,’ Harry told R.L. Stevenson Jamieson in a while, ‘that the best your brother can expect is to be put away, probably for the rest of his days? And I do mean the very
best
he can expect.’

And the worst?

‘He thinks he’s a werewolf, R. L., and to my way of thinking he won’t be safe even behind bars or in a padded cell!

But the worst is death. If he puts up a fight… well, he just has to lose. Because if he doesn’t, other people will. They’ll lose their lives.’

He sensed R. L. ‘s nod. /
suppose I knowed that, deep down inside. Sure I did, ‘cos if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t a come toyou. But I figured if he got
to go, best at your hands, Necroscope.

‘Not if I can help it, R.L.,’ Harry shook his head. ‘Not now I’ve spoken to you. But if it comes down to it …’

’
/
understand,
R. L. told him.
And Harry, if I can be of any help …?

‘Well, perhaps you can at that.’ For out of the blue, the Necroscope had an idea. And: ‘How’s your obi, R.L.?’

Eh?
(And Harry could almost see the surprised expression on the other’s face).
Why, it be gone down into the earth
with me!

‘Oh, really?’ For Harry knew it wasn’t like that; he knew that whatever a man is or does in life, he’ll usually continue to be and do afterwards. Why, it could well be that R.L.’s obeah had helped keep his brother’s identity secret even among the Great Majority!

You think so?
R.L. obviously hadn’t given it any thought.
Oh, my! You means, I was still looking out for A.C. even after he
killed me?

‘It could very well be,’ Harry told him. ‘In a way you’ve kept right on protecting him - or his good name, at least.’

Huh!
said R. L.
His good name, indeed!

Brian Lumley

102

‘Yours, then,’ Harry answered. ‘And now, well, maybe you can protect me, too.’

Eh? How’s that?
(Astonishment, this time!)

Harry explained, and R.L. quickly got the picture. He was dead and his obi with him …• or maybe not. Through the Necroscope he could use it again,
for
the Necroscope! And in doing so deny its use to his brother. ‘But only if it comes down to it,’ Harry told him—

—And in the next moment gave a massive start! There in the deep black shadows of the alley, he had been so caught up in his conversation with the dead man that he’d failed to hear the pad of soft, furtive footfalls as they approached him. Too late he
had
heard them - at the same time as a hand came down on his shoulder!

‘Harry?’ Trevor Jordan said, as the Necroscope gasped and lurched away from him. ‘Did I startle you?’

‘Jesus Christ!’
Harry whispered, falling back against the wall. Trevor … Trevor, what do you think you’re doing!?’

‘What I was told to do,’ the other answered with a shrug and looked perplexed. ‘I’m keeping a low profile, what else?’

VI

AND ONE OTHER

Freed of his conversation with R.L., Harry’s mind became a possible target again, as did the telepath Trevor Jordan’s. For of course he, too, was an enemy of A.C. Doyle Jamieson. The extrasensory presence of both of them was too much; their combined esp-auras - undetectable to the great mass of mundane mankind - radiated out from them into the rainy night in every direction.