Necroscope 9: The Lost Years (25 page)

Not that there was much of good news. ‘Do you really want to know?’

Is it that bad?

‘Well, it isn’t wonderful!’ He pulled a face. ‘You’ll have to judge for yourself.’ And recalling a recent newscast:

‘Most of Africa is in turmoil: Zambia and Rhodesia, Mogadishu, Somalia, Ethiopia. White “supremacy” looks to be on its way out in Rhodesia, where they’ve just voted for black rule.’

But isn’t that just right? Aren’t all men born equal?

Again his shrug. ‘As long as the recently equal are happy to remain equal -1 mean as long as they don’t want to be
more
equal - I suppose it’s okay …’ And quickly, so as to radically change the subject before she could start protesting or moralizing: ‘And there’s been an atomic meltdown at a place called Three Mile Island in the United States.

It’s a power station.’

Oh?
(She scarcely sounded impressed).
Something melted? Is it that important?

Harry had to grin. When his Ma had died nuclear power was fairly new, industrially at least. ‘It’s pretty important, yes. Dangerous stuff. It

Brian Lumley

126

Necroscope: The Lost Years - Vol. I

127

kils people, Ma. An unpleasant, invisible, silent death.’ The grin was gone now from his face, and his Ma knew why. She had gathered the rest of it - the seething horror of it - from his mind. And he felt her incorporeal shudder.

What else?
she said.

‘Wel, there’s been some prety terrible stuff coming out of Cambodia, but—’

—But Harry couldn’t possibly talk about
that,
not to his Ma! He at once bit his tongue and blanked his mind, wondering where in hel his thoughts could have been wandering that he’d ever mentioned it. Maybe it was because of the way
she,
his Ma, had died, but reading about that death-lake in Stung Treng had given the Necroscope nightmares: those two thousand bodies tied together with ropes and weighted with stones …

She had caught on from his first mention of Cambodia, however, and quietly said,
‘Oh, don’t worry, Harry. For we know all about that. And as for
Pol Pot: well, he’ll have to come to us, too, you know, in the end. But he can have no idea what’s waiting for him down here.

‘What’s waiting for him?’ Harry had never thought of the dead as being especially vengeful. After al, what could they do? - wel, without that he, Harry Keogh, the Necroscope, was their motivation?

Do?
His Ma at once answered.
We’ll do nothing, say nothing, have nothing at all
to
do, not with him. And he’ll be so cold, lost, and lonely, it
will be as though he has no existence, not even
this
kind of existence, whatsoever. And eventually he won’t have. He’ll simply fade away into
nothing. But he
wil
know why …

For a moment Harry felt the icy chil of her words - the coldness of outer space, the blackness of inner earth - as if it had entered into his soul. But it quickly passed and she was warm again. Strange, but of al Harry’s dead people she was the only one who ever

‘felt’ warm! Or maybe not so strange. She was his Ma, after al.

‘So, that’s it then,’ he said after a while, and shrugged. ‘Oh, there’s other stuff, but maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to tel you what was happening in the world after al. I mean, when you think about it, that meltdown at Three Mile Island is probably the least of our worries!’

And she was glad to change the subject, too.
But if this … ‘meltdown?’ is so dangerous, then why did they do it?

‘What?’ (Was her understanding that limited?) ‘But it was an
accident,
Ma! They didn’t do it on purpose!’

Oh!
(She gave a litle laugh).
Then I suppose it can’t be helped, can it?
But her laughter quickly died away, and it was time to be serious again.

So
in fact nothing is very much different from what it always was: men go on making mistakes. And I don’t suppose there’s much help for that.

But now you’ve got to tell me what
can
be helped, Harry. Tell me how I can help. And more especially, how I can help you …

So finaly the Necroscope’s beloved mother, his frequently omniscient Ma (where he was concerned, anyway), had got to the point. She sensed it when his shoulders slumped a litle, just before he sighed and told her: ‘I haven’t found them yet, Ma - Brenda and my baby son. Oh, there are a milion places I’ve not even thought to look yet, I know, but that seems a milion too many to even know where to start!’

For a while she was silent, then quietly said,
Do you want me to ask among the dead, Harry? I mean, do you think it’s possible that…?

Harry scarcely dared question her on the subject, but knew he must. ‘Surely not, Ma?’ he said, almost pleadingly. ‘If that was the case, wouldn’t you have known by now? If they were …?’

Not necessarily, son,
she said.
It depends where, and when. I mean, if it were
you
we’d know, be sure! And no matter where
or
when, for
there’s only one Necroscope … well, two now. And we’d know it at once, if your light went out. But death is generally a common affair:
someone is born, lives, and dies. Inevitably. Brenda is Brenda, just another ordinary person, another life. And if she were to die
in some far place, well that could take some little time to get back to me.

‘And your grandson, Harry Jr? Is he just another “ordinary” person? I don’t think so - and not just because he’s your grandson. He
knows
about you! You know about him! Wouldn’t the Great Majority know it if his light was extinguished, too?’

But you have been with us for some time, Harry,
she reminded him.
And the Great Majority didn’t know about you, either, at first. Why, they
didn’t even know about each other until you came on the scene! Oh, I knew you were different, but then I was your mother! But believe me, it
took quite a while to convince the rest. Finally, they believed; how could it be otherwise? They felt your warmth as you passed close by; they
heard your dreaming, and sensed you trembling when you were afraid. In those days of your childhood, they sprang to champion you. Little
did they know that one day you would be the champion of the dead!

‘You mean, they don’t know him yet? He hasn’t been around long enough? But in Hartlepool that time - what, a year and half ago? - they even came up out of their graves for him!’

For both of you, Harry. Oh, Harry Jr caled them up, but who did they come to save?

‘Isn’t he …
warm,
then? Like me?’

He’s warm, yes. And the dead feel him like a small, kindly flame. But he isn’t the light in their darkness, like you. One day, maybe, but not yet.

‘You won’t know it, then, if he dies …’ It wasn’t a question but a statement. And in a way Harry was glad. He wouldn’t want to be appraised of his son’s death, nor of Brenda’s, ever. Neither by the living nor the dead.

/
would know it… sooner or later,
his mother told him.
But right now, I can promise you this much at least: nothing of that
nature has

Brian Lumley

128

Necroscope: The Lost Years - Vol. I

129

reached me yet. To my knowledge, they are still among the living.

Harry breathed a sigh of relief. If his mother said it was so, then it was so. And in al truth, that had only been a very smal fear anyway; he had ‘known’, been sure, that his wife and son were alive somewhere. But where?

His Ma heard his silent query, and asked him:
Where would you go, Harry, if you wanted to hide yourself away? Where would Brenda go?

Surely you knew something of her secrets, her fantasies, her dreams?

Suddenly the Necroscope realized how selfish he must seem. Because he hadn’t been thinking of it from his wife’s point of view, not really, but his own. And now his mother, in her way, had brought it home to him that Brenda was a person in her own right, with her own secrets, fantasies, dreams. With feelings and emotions and passions, al of them damaged now, or contaminated by contact with Harry’s world, until she had only wanted to ‘hide herself away’ from it. But:

That’s not what I meant, son,
his Ma told him.
You know it isn’t! It was simply my … my manner of expression.

Except Harry knew that speaking to the dead often conveys more than is actually said; so maybe he’d read something of his Ma’s true thoughts, after al. And certainly she had touched a raw nerve in him. Perhaps deliberately? Ah, but she had a way of bringing things into perspective, his mother - and ways of bringing
him
into line!

But at the same time her approach to his problem had set the Necroscope thinking. For of course Brenda
was
different, a person in her own right with her own ways of thinking, her own likes and dislikes. So that now Harry wondered where
would
she be likely to hide herself away, if ‘hiding’ as such had seemed the only course open to her? She had never been much of a one for the sun but always enjoyed the rain!

She’d loved gardens, the wind in her hair, dramatic, misted landscapes. To sit in a window-seat in their garret flat and listen to the rain on the tiles …

that had been one of her favourite things.

In which case,
Harry’s Ma chimed in,
this place would seem entirely suited to her purpose! This very place!

‘She never even saw this place,’ he shook his head.

But a place
like
this one?

‘Maybe, maybe not. Certain coastlines seemed to appeal to her, rugged cliffs and rainy skies … and any garden; but more especially, a garden with a coiner run wild. Long grasses, wild flowers, and a place where she could lie on her back and watch the clouds. And the stars: the brighter the better. She didn’t know a single constellation, but she liked them anyway. A place of wildness - a wilderness - and a lot of stars in the clear night sky: that would suit her perfectly.’

You’re a poet and you don’t know it!
His Ma rhymed.

‘I wonder where I get it? Harry said. And she sensed that his mood was lifting a litle.

/
think it’s about time you started checking on those million places,
she told him.
For after all, we must have narrowed them down a little by
now.
And Harry agreed.

They little thought or could ever have guessed that Brenda and Harry Jr were in just such a place as the Necroscope’s Ma had suggested, which her query had brought into vivid definition in his mind. A place of dramatic scenery, however alien; of long, misted nights, slanting, sunlit days, long grasses and wild flowers.

And a garden quite beyond Brenda’s previous expectations, her mundane imagination.

For the fact was that at this point of time it was beyond even the Necroscope’s imagination, too, and would stay that way long after he’d given up any real hope of finding them …

But for now: first Harry reconsidered the places he’d already checked out, starting with Brenda’s old home with her folks in Harden, a coliery vilage on the northeast coast.

The mine (‘the pit’) itself had been worked out and shut down for some time now, so that the place had seemed even more souless than before, but the people were there as always. Of course, if Brenda or the baby were realy trying to avoid him, if they were actualy hiding themselves away from him - which he was forced to believe was true - then this would be the last place they’d go. Harry had known that from the start, but still he had looked. What he’d found had made him more miserable yet.

He couldn’t simply approach Brenda’s people as in the old days, for he was no longer him. What, go to them and tell them
he
was Harry Keogh, and try to explain? They’d never accept any of
that,
these salt-of-the-earth - and very much
down
to earth - northeast folks! Instead he’d approached Brenda’s father in his local pub, introducing himself as a friend of Harry’s, and asking what had become of him. Which had had a mixed result.

To make a long story short: Brenda and Harry had got married, and there was a child. Eighteen months ago, she’d taken the baby to London to join her husband.

He was working there, writing a book or something. She was always very quiet about his work. Nothing strange about that; she was probably a bit ashamed that he didn’t have a ‘proper job.’ What, Harry Keogh? Why, he hadn’t done a stroke since leaving school - not physical work, anyway. But whatever he did, writing or whatever, he must be doing al right; she’d never been short of money.

But then, just a few weeks ago, she’d writen to say that she was taking the baby ‘abroad’ somewhere. And that was maybe a funny thing, for she hadn’t mentioned her husband: just herself and the baby. Still, she’d hinted often enough that Harry did some kind of hush-hush job with the government; maybe that was it. They must have gone off somewhere overseas to some embassy or other. Maybe the writing hadn’t worked out, so he was wearing his other hat now. Maybe the

130

Brian Lumley

Necroscope: The Lost Years - Vol. I

131

government had given him a job as one of these ‘special couriers’ or something: someone who carries important documents or goods from country to country. Or perhaps the writing
had
worked out after all, and all of this was a tax dodge. Except… well, Brenda should
write
more often. That last letter had been - what? All of five or six weeks ago?

And they were her parents, after all…