Necroscope 9: The Lost Years (22 page)

Harry wasn’t much disturbed by the movement on the right, which wasn’t so much furtive as deliberate, purposeful.

He knew the
sounds
he heard were the shuffling scrape of George Jakes’s feet where he headed off alone on his mission of vengeance. But Jakes’s
shape
and
shadow
were grotesque things, made even more grotesque by the glowing nucleus of the single dim light bulb, which silhouetted his lumpish figure in a pale aura, and cast his long freakish shadow on the angular machinery and dangling festoons of chains like that of some nightmarish spider on its web.

But the movement to the left? The door to the maintenance yard was that way. Had Trevor Jordan somehow managed to force an entry, or was someone waiting for him to do so there in the darkness? Harry conjured a Mobius door and jumped to the warehouse doors. Standing in the near-absolute darkness, scarcely breathing, he could hear nothing inside.

But outside:

Harry?
It was Jordan’s telepathic whisper, the result of a gigantic effort on the part of the telepath.
Can you … let
me in?

No,
Harry thought his denial.
Just stay in touch with me. Then, if anything happens, get the hell away from here and call the
police!

You’ve got it,
and he sensed the relief in Jordan’s mind. But they had also given themselves, and their situation, away!

Hey, you. Fuckscope!
(In his mind, Harry saw a hulking, menacing outline moving in the mechanical labyrinth of the garage). /
know where you are, shithead. You’re locked in and one other mother’s locked out. And I’m coming for you,
Fuckscope!
The maniac bayed like a hound, but al in silence.

Trevor, did you get that?’ Harry spoke out loud through a knothole in a wicket gate set in the main door. ‘Can you pinpoint him?’

‘Yes,’ Jordan’s anxious whisper came back. ‘He’s down in the basement where they keep their personal vehicles. But he’s moving in your direction. He
is
coming for you, Harry!’

Yes, but A.C. isn’t a Necroscope,
(Harry kept that thought to himself).
And he hasn’t got the foggiest idea what’s coming for him!
Neither had Jordan known it until he saw it in Harry’s mind, and then he recoiled as if slapped in the face!
However,
Harry went on,
if A. C. Doyle knows where I am, then it’s
probably a good idea not to be here.

Going on foot this time, using the repair bays as cover, he made his way back along the central aisle into the heart of the garage. But

halfway back to the single source of electric light… suddenly it was snuffed! There came the soft tinkle of fragile glass breaking.

Harry froze. Whoever had smashed the light, it wouldn’t be George Jakes. Because light or dark it would make no difference to him. Jakes was governed by … whatever he was governed by! Love of the Necroscope, mainly; or Harry’s power over the dead, whichever way one chose to think of it. So, it could only have been A.C. or Skippy - or one other?

One other,
Jordan told him.
But I can’t read him … or her! This one has a funny mind. I’ve met the like before. You can’t scan them any too
easily. They sort of deflect telepathic probes. Like mindsmog, you know? I don’t think it’s a conscious thing, but—

I get the idea,
Harry cut him off, and made to release the safety on his 9mm Browning. But even as he did so, chains rattled almost directly overhead!

The Necroscope’s gaze jerked upwards. He saw eyes glaring down on him from the gloom of the gantry walkway. And sliding down the greasy chains, a lithe, black-clad male figure kicked the gun from his hand, not only disarming him but numbing his arm at the same time.

Shocked, caught completely off guard, Harry’s thoughts flew in every direction. Fumbling, he made to conjure a Mobius door, tripped and went sprawling over an open box of tools into a pile of fresh swarf. He felt a leg of his trousers rip, felt his hands sliced as he scrambled to untangle himself. But suddenly the black-clad figure was standing over him, eyes burning in a black stocking-mask, and a dark gash grimacing where the mouth would be. Then the mouth formed words, and snarled:

‘Just one more motherfucking copper who won’t come snooping anymore!’ A Geordie voice - Skippy - and the Necroscope could picture the writhing of the scorpion tattoo on his wrist as he drew back his arm for the killing stroke; but no need to imagine his weapon. Harry could see that well enough: the long ugly curve of a silver-glinting machete!

The blade went up, commenced its arcing sweep forward and down—

—And something struck out of the darkness, making first a vibrating thrum, then the vicious
whuuup
sound of cleft air! But it didn’t cleave the Necroscope.

The machete flew out of Skippy’s hand; his black silhouette was straightened forcefully from its killing, feet-apart stance, jerked upright and tossed back like a carelessly discarded puppet. He tugged at something sticking out of his chest, coughed a spray of black that Harry knew must be red, and went down into darkness without another sound. And stayed down.

A shadow moved sinuously close by. Harry heard a straining sound -like something being stretched under pressure

- and the sharp
click
as a

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catch engaged. And being no stranger to crossbows, he knew what had hit Skippy. A moment later:

The bright beam of a pocket torch shone directly into his eyes. He was stil tangled in cutting swarf, and dripped blood where he put up a hand to shield his eyes. But before the light snapped off he saw the Browning lying in the swarf and reached for it. This time, before freeing himself, he prepared the gun for firing. As he did so, he saw the shadow - a female shape, surely? and one that he’d seen before? but he couldn’t be sure because his eyes were still dazzled - slipping away along the central aisle.

Think straight, can’t you!
Trevor Jordan snapped in his mind. And as Harry finaly got to his feet, in a softer, more anxious tone:
How bad is
it? Are you okay?

I’ll live,
the Necroscope answered, hoping Jordan would hear him.
But things are getting nasty now and I can’t rightly say what’s going on.

Get back over the wall and call for backup. Let’s have the police in on it.

H.Q. has been tracking us,
Jordan answered. /
called for back-up the moment you … what, went into shock? I thought it was all over for you,
Harry!

No, not quite, not yet,
Harry answered.
Now for Christ’s sake leave me be! I need to concentrate.

And as Jordan cleared the telepathic ether, so Harry took over. He spoke to R.L. Stevenson Jamieson:
R.L.? I hope you’ve got your obi going full blast. A.C. ‘s going to be pretty mad when he finds out he’s lost a bosom pal!

‘Fraid not, Necroscope,
R.L. came back at once.
You is on your own. My obi maintains the balance, that’s all. But now the balance is all in
your
favour! And in case you is interested, I wants you to know we just welcomed a stranger into the ranks of the Great Majority. Or we will,
eventually, when he quits fussing and screaming, and if he be worth it.

Skippy?
(Harry scowled, and knew that R.L. would feel the depth of his loathing, the way he shuddered in his soul).
Wel, he isn’t worth it!
But in the moment of speaking, Harry sensed that the shuddering wasn’t his alone. The intruder, A.C. Doyle Jamieson, was back. Except now he was whimpering like a whipped dog where he crouched in Harry’s metaphysical mind - almost as if he were trying to hide there!

Get out of there, A.C.,
Harry quietly, coldly told him. /
don’t want to share your pain with you when finally you die!

Let me show you something, Fuckscope.
The other’s terror was transformed on the instant, replaced by rage and madness. Now he no longer panted his fear but his hatred and bloodlust.
Let me show you how it was for the rest of those bastards who tried to bring the
werewolf to heel!

But before he could begin:
No!
the Necroscope refused him point-blank.
I’ve already seen how it was, A.C. I know
exactly
how it was. So
instead, I’d like to show
you
something:
(A mental picture of Skippy,

transfixed by a crossbow bolt, stopped dead - literally - in his tracks, and sprawled in the bloody swarf where he’d falen). But because that didn’t seem enough:

Harry opened up his metaphysical mind to display al the unknown depths, the gauntly yawning vacuum, the absolute
otherness
of the endless Mobius Continuum. A.C. saw how Harry was a part of it, linked to it, and finaly sensed the preternatural chil of The Great Unknown creeping in his bones. Then, as the psychic ether slowly cleared:

Well?
The Necroscope was very quiet now.
And are you still coming for me, Arthur?

The answer was a howl - but one of anguish, of a diseased mentality frustrated to the breaking point - that reverberated in the darkness of the garage and went echoing off into a throbbing silence. No, A.C. wasn’t coming for him; A. C. was running!

From somewhere below came the cough of a motor revved into tortured life, the scream of its abused engine, and Harry supposed that A.C. was heading out of here. There was only one way out, down the old car-park ramp and through the barrier. But if the barrier were lowered?

Harry judged the co-ordinates and made a hasty jump to the garage entrance, just inside the retractable doors. To his left he saw the dark tunnel of a two-lane down-ramp to the basement; down there, headlight beams swerved erraticaly, tyres shrieked their shrill protest as the revving roar came closer.

Hurriedly, Harry scanned the wals on both sides of the exit for the buton controling the overhead door, to no avail. And it was too late to cover the thirty or so feet to the barrier’s tiny control shack, switch on and lower the boom; A.C.’s vehicle was already roaring up the ramp from the basement! But:
Don’t sweat it, Necroscope,
said George Jakes’s incorporeal voice in his head.
Didn’t you hear the bugle sounding the charge? The cavalry’s right here, Harry!

Harry looked, and he saw, and even the Necroscope himself scarcely believed what he was seeing. But conversation with the dead often conveys more than is actually said, and Jakes showed him the whole picture in the time it took for the battered van to make it up the ramp; or rather, he showed him the picture as it had been just a minute or so ago:
A. C. Doyle Jamieson, tall, burly, decked out in his wolf-mask and wearing his glove weapon, lurching like a drunkard in
the darkness of the basement, spewing obscenities like the madman he was as he made for his van. The vehicle was parked with its
driver’s door to the wall; A.C. yanked open the front-seat passenger’s door and hurled himself headfirst inside the cab. But before he
could reach the controls the motor coughed into life! Someone was in the driver’s seat, hunched over the steering
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wheel, andA.C. knew it could only be one of his enemies! So why hadn’t he been able to read him?

The answer was obvious, but of course A. C. couldn’t know it: that only the Necroscope, Harry Keogh, can read anything of the dead!

The cab rocked as the van drew out into the central aisle and the driver gunned the motor, heading for the dim square of light that marked the exit ramp. Then
the headlights blazed on and iluminated a figure standing dead ahead, a female figure with her arm and hand raised and pointing -or aiming - directly at the
cab!

This was a concerted atack; they were acting in perfect co-ordination, al of A.C. Doyle’s enemies together! He yelped, ducked, turned and struck with his
honed steel claw al in one movement - struck at the face of the man at the wheel. And the face unzipped itself like a banana, its flesh flopping down in strips, then
turned to grin at him with scarlet gums and reddened teeth and wet, pus-dripping eyes!

A.C. would have screamed then, but could only go ‘Urgh, urgh, urghhh!’ as the
Thing
beside him lay back its grotesque head and gurgled:

‘Ow-woooow, wolfman! Ifs silver bulet time!’

But in fact it was crossbow-bolt time: a bolt that came smashing through the windscreen and nailed A. C. ‘s shoulder to the padding of the seat, where its
head jammed in the aluminium back-plate …

All of this from Jakes’s mind as the van reached the top of the ramp and bounded onto the ground-floor level, and turned left, not right, to go revving up the skeletal ramp to the next floor, and the next, and the one after that. All the way to the top. And Harry seeing it through Jakes’s dead eyes, but
hearing
it with his own ears even over the thunder of the van’s engine:

A.C. Doyle’s shril, agonized, maniacal screaming, as it finaly dawned on him that a man he’d kiled was about to kil him! And:
Cheers, Necroscope!
Jakes crowed in Harry’s metaphysical mind, and he aimed the vehicle at the parapet wall six storeys up.

Thanks for having me in on this. This is for Jim Banks and Derek Stevens, but mainly if s for me. The tank of this bucket is full,
and I always wanted to go out this way: in a blaze of glory! Oh and by the way, here’s the face of the ugly fuck who caused all of this:
And he reached over with a dead hand to rip A.C.’s wolf-mask right off his head. Which was at the same time as the van hit the wall and went through it in a crumbling of rotten mortar and battered concrete, and a shrieking of twisted metal.