Necroscope 9: The Lost Years (28 page)

‘Now listen, Harry. You are still you but / am no longer you. This is someone new speaking to you - someone you don’t know! You don’t know me, but you can hear me. If you
can
hear me, say yes.’ Harry’s head had commenced its almost robotic, mechanical nod; but now it paused, stiffened into immobility, and his mouth fell open. His tongue wriggled a moment in the cave of his mouth, then stuttered:

‘Y … ye …
yes.’

‘Good! Now then, my friend, my good friend. I’ve heard it said that you have amazing powers? Is this true? Answer me!’

The Necroscope said nothing - but his face grew pale, his eyelids fluttered and his tongue wobbled wildly. Which was the point where Darcy had begun to wish he’d never set this in motion, except the possible alternative had been unthinkable.

‘Let’s be reasonable,’ Anderson’s oh so persuasive voice had droned on. ‘Let’s have a normal conversation, Harry.

Your throat is no longer dry; your mouth is salivating; your tongue is freed and you can talk normally. Let’s
talk
normally, shall we? Now, what
is
all this about these powers of yours? You can trust me, Harry. Tell me about them …’

At that the Necroscope had seemed to relax a little. His eyelids had stopped fluttering; his mouth closed as he licked his lips; his Adam’s apple bobbed as he moistened his throat. Then:

‘Powers?’ he said, enquiringly. ‘Whose powers? You have me at a disadvantage. I’m afraid I don’t know you, or what you’re talking about.’ (At which Darcy had grinned, for this was more like it. Harry didn’t

seem uncomfortable any more - indeed he
was
having a ‘normal’ conversation. And he was lying his head off!) Anderson had glanced at Darcy, nodded and said, ‘He was a difficult subject. I know it’s hard to believe, that it looked very easy, but you’ll just have to take my word for it: he
was
hard to get into, and I could feel him fighting me. I always know when they are fighting me, for I get these terrible headaches … ” He used a handkerchief to pat several beads of sweat from his forehead. ‘And you can believe me, I’ve got a beauty right now! But let’s put it to the ultimate test, eh? He knows you, right? He knows you for a good and trustworthy friend? So why don’t
you
ask him about these wonderful powers of his?’

‘What?’ Darcy had been taken by surprise. ‘Just like that? I can … talk to him while he’s under?’

And: ‘Wait,’ Anderson had told him, and turned back to the Necroscope. ‘Harry, you have a friend here, Darcy Clarke. Darcy wants to speak to you, Harry, and you will talk to him just as you have spoken to me: a perfectly normal conversation. Do you understand?’

‘Of course,’ Harry had answered, a half-smile forming on his sleeping face. And without pause: ‘How’s it going, Darcy?’

For a moment Darcy had been taken aback; he hadn’t quite known what to say. Then words had formed and he’d said. ‘It’s all going well, Harry. And you?’

‘Oh, so-so. Better when I know about Brenda and the baby. I mean, when I know they’re okay.’

It was the lead Darcy had been looking for. ‘Sure. And as the Necroscope - I mean with your powers and all - it won’t take too long, right?’

Harry’s eyes had stayed closed, but he’d cocked his head inquiringly on one side. ‘Eh?’ he’d finally answered, frowning. And: ‘It seems everyone is determined to talk in riddles today! Look, I hate to rush off like this but I’m - you know - busy? Do you mind?’ And with that he’d rolled over in his bed, turning his back on both of them.

At which Anderson had grasped Darcy’s elbow, saying, ‘Not even you! You see, he won’t even talk to you about it -whatever “it” is. Well, so far so good. But now I’d like to hammer the point home. I want to reinforce it and make absolutely certain that my post-hypnotic command is in place. Except I warn you: this is very repetitious stuff. I’m afraid I may bore you to death. Or if not that, I might certainly put
you
to sleep, too!’ Anderson’s success had pleased him, making him seem more warm and human.

Darcy had stayed, however, and seen it out to the end. And Anderson had been right: it was repetitious and boring, so that by the time he was done Darcy was indeed yawning.

‘And now he can sleep it off,’ the doctor had told Darcy, as they turned off the light and let themselves out of Harry’s room.

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-
Vol. I

142

Brian Lumley

Then, in his-office, Darcy had asked: ‘What next? Is there anything else I should do? I’m having breakfast with Harry tomorrow morning.’

Anderson had shrugged. ‘He’ll probably seem a little confused, reluctant. Whatever this big secret of Keogh’s is, all of your E-Branch agents presumably know about it. It’s simply that you’re keeping it from the outside world, right?’

That’s right,’ Darcy had nodded his agreement. ‘We know about it, and Harry
knows
we know—’

‘—Hence the confusion,’ Anderson had finished for him. ‘If I were you I wouldn’t test it: don’t even bring it up. Or if you must, then have someone else test it. Some “stranger?” But well away from this place.’

And Darcy had seen the sense in that. ‘And is that all? Nothing else I should know?’

Anderson had looked at him, pursed his full lips, said: ‘He’s no longer one of yours?’

‘That’s right. He’s moving on. He has things to do. But why do you ask? Is it important?’

Again Anderson’s shrug. ‘There may be - I don’t know - side effects?’ But before Darcy could show his alarm: ‘I mean, I’ve been into his mind - or not
into
it, but I have opened it up a little. In some people the mind is like a door with rusty hinges. And as I told you, Harry’s door was damned near welded shut! So I… applied a little oil. You see, it’s not simply the drugs and my eyes and my voice, Darcy - it’s also my mind. No, I’m not an esper like you and yours, but I’m special in my own way just the same. I mean, I can put certain people under just by snapping my fingers! But Harry wasn’t one of them. He was difficult. Except now that I’ve oiled his hinges, so to speak, well, he could be easier the next time.’

The next time?’

‘If someone did get hold of Keogh, it’s possible - just possible, mind you - that they’d be able to get into his mind as

“easily” as I seemed to.’

They could undo what you’ve done?’

‘Ah, no, I didn’t say that!’ Anderson had held up a cautionary finger. ‘What I’ve done is done, and as far as I know only I can break it. But the rest of Harry’s mind might now be more accessible.
He
might more readily give in to hypnotic suggestion. However, that’s a pretty big might. I shouldn’t worry about it if I were you.’

But in fact Darcy Clarke hadn’t stopped worrying about it ever since, for close on five weeks. It was a terrible idea, a fearful concept: to have someone break into a man’s id - into
him -
without his knowing it; to weaken him in ways he wasn’t even aware of, then leave the doors of his mind flapping helplessly to and fro in the wind of some future mental intrusion!

Not that it was really as bad as all that,
Darcy told himself, returning to the present. He was simply over-dramatizing again, that’s all. It

wasn’t as if the Necroscope was likely to come up against another hypnotist, now was it?

But still, it wasn’t the sort of thing Darcy Clarke himself would ever want to happen to him. Not likely! And of course, it couldn’t
ever
happen to him, not as long as his guardian angel talent was watching over him.

On one of the last two counts Darcy was quite wrong, and on the other he wasn’t quite right. But then, he wasn’t a precog.

Which was perhaps just as well…

That same night Harry took the Mobius route into the heart of Edinburgh and hailed a taxi. It was raining and he didn’t want to walk -and anyway he wouldn’t know where to go, for B.J.’s wasn’t in the book. But his taxi driver should know it.

‘B.J.’s,’ he told the man, who turned, looked back at him, and shook his head sadly.

There’s a lot cheaper places tae get pissed, Chief, if ye must,’ he said. ‘But the booze in they damn wine bars costs a pretty penny, aye!’ He was a ‘canny Scot,’ obviously.

Thanks for the advice,’ Harry told him, ‘but B.J. ‘s will do.’

‘As ye say,’ the other shrugged. ‘Ah expec’ it’s the young lassies, aye.’ And they headed for B.J.’s.

The Necroscope quickly got himself lost as the taxi turned right off Princes Street into a maze of alleys, and the looming grey bulk of Edinburgh Castle, his principal landmark, vanished into a rain-blurred sky, behind the complex and merging silhouettes of shiny rooftops and arching causeways. The echoing canyon walls of bleakly uninteresting, almost subterranean streets and alleys sped by on both sides, and between squealing, nerve-rending swipes of the windscreen blades Harry could look ahead and see a pale glow of city lights reflected on the undersides of lowering clouds.

Time seemed suspended … he might even have dozed a little in the musty-smelling back seat. But eventually:

‘B.J.’s,’ the driver grunted, bringing his taxi to a halt in a narrow street of three-storey buildings whose shop-front fagades were built onto or extended from the old brickwork of a gently curving Victorian terrace.

Harry shook himself awake, climbed stiffly out of the taxi and paid the fare, then turned up his collar and looked up and down the street. And as the taxi pulled away he saw that the area was more than a little rundown and shabby, and hardly the place he’d thought it would be. It scarcely matched up to B.J. or what he’d imagined of her. But just what
had
he imagined of her? What sort of place had he envisioned? A low, Moorish dive - but one with style - on the fringe of some Moroccan
Kasbah,
like a Rick’s Cafe and Casino, magically transported from pre-war Casablanca? What, to Edinburgh? Oh, there were dives here,

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certainly - likewise in London, Birmingham, Newcastle, Liverpool, and Leicester; and in Berlin, Moscow, Nicosia, New York, Paris, almost anywhere - but as for style … that was about as far as it went.

Harry had no idea where he was, his physical geographical location, but he did know he’d never have any trouble finding it again. He had instinctively absorbed
the feel
of the place - its aura, its ‘co-ordinates’ -into his metaphysical mind. From this time forward, using the Mobius Continuum, he would always be able to come here.

The rain came squalling slantwise; the street was almost deserted; it was too late for run-of-the-mill shops, and only one late-nighter was lit at the far end of the street. A Chinese takeaway was open maybe halfway down, also a pub opposite the restaurant, letting out a little orange light from incongruous ‘antique’ bull’s-eye windows. But where was B.J.’s?

For a moment the Necroscope thought his driver had simply dumped him at The End Of The Known World, until he spotted the illuminated sign, no bigger or brighter than a cinema’s ‘Exit’ sign, over a shaded door set back from the pavement between a shoe shop on the one hand and a fish-and-chip bar with a ‘For Sale’ sign in the whitewashed windows on the other. The illuminated sign was in dull blue neon and simply said, ‘B.J. ‘s.’

Harry moved into the shadow between the two shops, making for the door. But as he did so, he sensed movement across the street. Turning his head, he was barely in time to witness the brief electric glare of a camera’s flash from a dark shop doorway directly opposite. Now what the hell … ? Someone taking a picture of him, outside B.J. ‘s? But who could have known he’d be coming here? He hadn’t known himself until this afternoon! And he certainly hadn’t told anyone.

He turned towards the street and made as if to cross … and a slight, bent figure came scurrying out of the shop doorway, heading down the street towards the pub. Bird-bright eyes under a wide-brimmed hat glanced back at Harry, as the figure made off in a slap, slap, slap of leather on wet paving slabs.

Harry wanted to get a better look at this one. Fixing the orange glow of the pub’s small-pane windows in the eye of his mind, he quickly stepped back into the shadows and conjured a Mobius door … and a moment later stepped
out
of the shadows of the pub into the street, and headed back towards B.J. ‘s.

The mysterious figure in the raincoat and wide-brimmed hat came almost at a run, saw the Necroscope at the last moment and very nearly collided with him. As the man swerved aside, Harry caught at his arms as if to steady him, and so came eye-to-eye with him, however briefly. Briefly, yes, because even as Harry stared at him, so the small man displayed a surprising strength and wiriness, wrenched himself furiously free and made off down the street again. And this time Harry let him go, all five feet four or five of him, watching him disappear out of sight down a side alley …

Harry felt fairly certain he’d never seen the man before, and therefore that the stranger didn’t know and couldn’t possibly have recognized him. As for Harry’s use of the Mobius Continuum: the stranger would never believe that the man in front of B.J.’s was the same one he’d bumped into on the street just a moment later! So, nothing much for Harry to concern himself over there. But…

what was it all about? Was it some kind of threat, something to worry over? Or was it simpler than that?

Maybe Darcy Clarke had decided to have Harry watched - or watched over - for his own good. But if that was the case, how had Darcy known he’d be going to B.J. ‘s?

Maybe the explanation was even simpler:

Like, someone was watching B.J.’s for his own reasons. Or perhaps a private detective for someone else’s reasons?

Or the police? What if B.J.’s was a front for something else? And what kind of a girl - or woman - was this Bonnie Jean anyway, that she should go around shooting at men with a crossbow? But that last was a question Harry had asked himself many times before. It was one of the several reasons he was here: to find out if there was any connection between B.J. and Brenda’s disappearance.