Necroscope 9: The Lost Years (80 page)

In the very instant of his inwards-directed question, the Necroscope was warned not to ask it. Too late; Harry’s

‘natural curiosity’ had let him down; his mental
guard
was down, and his every thought was like a spoken word to the dead. Of which Le Manse Madonie - and the ‘pit’ in

particular - had more than its fair share. They might have remained silent, but his query; ‘What was this place used for?’ galvanized or even shocked them into grotesque activity. It had been akin to showing the long-healed victims of some hideous torture the implements of their suffering. Except it was much worse, for
these
victims were not yet healed.

The use of this place, of the pit? But they had been part of its use - as they were even now part of the creature
in
the pit! And while he,
it,
was not quite insane, they were -
driven
mad, because they remembered what they had been, and knew what they’d become.

The Necroscope gaped; his jaw fell open in that same split second; the short hairs stood up stiff at the back of his neck, because he sensed the coming onslaught. But this time - however strangely, inexplicably -he was ready for it. He somehow
knew
these people … he had heard their dead voices before, but had forgotten them because they were part of something that he had been
ordered
to forget. Now, however, he was once more performing in that earlier ‘mode,’ so that for the time being his subconscious memory was intact again. And:

Him!
(The one with the small, timid voice).

He was here befoooore!
(The one who growled).

He’s back! back! back!
(A voice that seemed to echo).

He didn’t listen, didn’t run!
(The agonized girl, her pain still fresh in her incorporeal mind).

He must be as mad as we are - har, har, haaarrrrgh!
(The utterly crazed one, whose ‘laughter’ had sounded like bullets, and now sounded like a soul tearing).

But all of them beating on Harry’s metaphysical mind simultaneously, so that he had difficulty sorting them out; beating almost physically, great hammerblows of passion, rage, or terror. And not only for themselves but for him.

‘Dead!’ the Necroscope heard himself gasp out loud. ‘But where? How?’ Again that question. And in answer:
Here!
(All of them in unison, explaining the where of it).
In the pit!
And another voice - like the breath of hell, like the croak of some gigantic, obscene toad - that cowed them all to silence in a moment, explaining the how of it: IN ME…!

Contact with the group had been through Harry’s talent: he was the Necroscope and conversed with the dead. But this other contact was different. It was telepathy, which Harry recognized in a moment. But how could it be, when its source was the same? They had the answer to that, too:

But we’re
part
of Him,
the terrified girl, perhaps not so terrified after all - or simply stronger, more determined than the rest - told him.
The Francezcis …

Brian Lumley

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BE QUIET!

…
They fed its
to
him!
She finished in a whisper.

He. Him. Something in the pit. Something that breathed air, creating the miasma rising from the throat of that now terrible hole. But… something alive?

Obviously - yet when Harry had spoken to them in his unique fashion,
it
had answered him back.

THEY’RE DEAD! The thing told him at once, its massive mentality gonging in Harry’s mind. BUT THEIR MINDS LIVE ON IN ME …

And because telepathy and the language of the dead frequently convey more than is actualy said, now Harry had the whole picture, or thought he did: The Francezci brothers - Wamphyri, last survivors of the dread Ferenczy dynasty - had
grown
something in this pit, even as Yulian Bodescu had grown that Other thing in the celars of Harkley House in Devon, England. But where Bodescu’s beast had been a mindless monstrosity sprouted of his own vampire flesh, a thing of little or no original inteligence, this construct of the Ferenczys was
hugely
intelligent! It gathered knowledge from the minds of those it consumed. It was powerfuly telepathic; it was
in
Harry’s mind even now, leeching his knowledge. He could
feel
it - its eagerly groping fingers - and slammed the doors of his mind on it, to shut it out before it learned too much! Its hold was broken; Necroscope and pit-thing stood off, ‘face to face,’ as it were, weighing each other up; Harry felt its awesome vampire probes fumbling at the outer reaches of his identity.

But while telepathy is one thing, communication with the dead is something else; while the thing in the pit could ‘hear’ Harry and its ‘own’ absorbed vestigial multi-minds speaking - and while it might occasionaly cow those consumed identities, or shout them down - it was mainly incapable of anything but threats.

For you can’t any longer hurt the dead. And the girl, the one whose agony was still so fresh, seemed finaly to have recognized that fact and
was
talking to Harry, begging him to:

Run! Oh, run! You’re warm and alive … you don’t want to be like us, cold and dead! So run!

‘But I have to know,’ Harry told her, as he sniffed the first faint reek of gas. ‘What … what
is
he?’

He is their seer, their scryer, their crystal ball. He’s their machine: they aim, direct him, and he gathers knowledge for them. Even from
across the world! He is their
oracle!
And more than that, he
—

—I WAS THEIR FATHER! The great voice was back, breaking through all Harry’s barriers. But now there was a gasping sob in it, an all-consuming grieving, a sense of great loss, like the loss of being - or of the
control
of being. I WAS

ANGELO FERRENZIG, FERENCZINI, FRANCEZCI. AND I
WAS
THE MASTER OF METAMORPHISM -UNTIL

METAMORPHISM MASTERED ME!

Again, more was conveyed than was spoken. Much more:

The Necroscope’s skin crept as he saw the seething horror of a grotesque birth …
twins, one of which was a
monster from first gasp and destroyed at once. The other was Angela, bloodson of Waldemar, and apparently normal… A
thousand years of vampire life, until his metamorphism ran rampant, became a disease, reduced or exploded him to what he was
now.

If Harry had wondered how many generations of Francezcis? - then he wondered no longer. The answer was one: the brothers themselves, twins sons of Angelo Ferenczini, born toward the end of his time as … as a man! For as his disease had taken hold on him, he had determined to extend something of his loathsome existence into the future. Or … perhaps he had hoped to do a lot more than that, which was why he was now trapped down here and not free-roaming. For Harry had ample evidence of the tenacity of the Wamphyri; he knew that if there’d been any way for this creature to continue as ‘a whole man,’ then that he would have found it -
or would yet find it!
- perhaps in one of his sons, if they’d not seen fit to trap him down here first.

So, how long had he been here? Two, three, four hundred years? And all that time his sons inhabiting Le Manse Madonie, sometimes as one person and at others as brothers. Little wonder there was a long history of twins - for they were the
same
twins!

They would live here for a while (until one of them had to ‘die’ and for a time live elsewhere,) then reverse the process, ‘rejuvenate,’

come together as sons and brothers again. And always there would be at least one ‘keeper’ here.

But their father was Faethor Ferenczy’s brother, or half-brother, out of a different mother, Constanza de’ Petralia. Had Angelo not known -didn’t he
know? -
of his sibling in a different time, a different land? And what of the long-dead Faethor? Did
he
not know of Angelo? He had never mentioned him to Harry. But then, Faethor had usually kept himself apart; his interests had been limited, divided between war and his mountain territories, and bitter hatred of his egg-son, Thibor the Wallach. Or perhaps the two
had
known of one another but simply stayed well apart. And anyway, what would it have profited Faethor to speak of this Angelo, whom he never met? And if he
had
spoken of him, would it have been the truth? For of all liars, there is none like a vampire: fathers not only of monsters, but of lies!

Harry gave up on it; there were discrepancies enough in the history of the Wamphyri, as the Necroscope had long-since discovered …

But though all of this - these incredible revelations, and the presence of the thing in the pit - was mind-staggering, still Harry had to know the worst of it. And through the first faint wisps of a yellow mist, he stumbled to the rim of the pit, avoided the wire-mesh, ignored his stinging eyes and gazed down the throat of the awful shaft.

Down there, looking back up at him through its own miasma,

Brian Lumley

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something with burning sulphur eyes quivered and surged …

Get out of here!
the multi-minds urged him, while the Necroscope reeled with the knowledge - the vision - of what had driven them half or wholy mad. But: OUT OF HERE? Angelo Ferenczy was quieter now, his ‘voice’ dripping sarcasm. OUT OF LE MANSE MADONIE? BUT CAN’T YOU SEE? HE CAME OF

HIS OWN FREE WILL - AND UNINVITED. THERE’S BUT ONE WAY OUT, WHICH HE WILL FIND BARRED, I AM SURE! AND EVENTUALLY …

AH, IT WILL BE A PLEASURE SPEAKING TO HIM AGAIN, BUT MORE
INTIMATELY NEXT
TIME! OH, HA HA HAAAA!

Dizziness, nausea, that same mental confusion which had left Harry so helpless on the road below Le Manse Madonie the previous afternoon, struck again! But this time he knew what it was. The mental
power
of the thing in the reeking pit - of Angelo Ferenczy, or what was become of him - was awesome. The Necroscope could only think of his own safety now. And he knew that the multi-minds of those that the thing had devoured were quite right: he should run, get out of here with al speed.

Harry staggered back from the pit amidst thickening clouds of yelow and conjured a Mobius door. It took unaccustomed effort… the gas was in his eyes and lungs; the multi-minds were shouting at him, telling him to run, run; and the ancient, hideously mutated Ferenczy was tearing aside the Necroscope’s mental barriers like so much tissue paper.

Panic set in. Confused, Harry saw half-a-dozen co-ordinates displayed on the screen of his mind, places he could escape to. Such as his old flat in Hartlepool; or beter still the Hartlepool cemetery, for the flat was probably occupied by now … or (most obvious) his hotel room in Paterno … or his study, garden, or bedroom at the house in Bonnyrig … Except he could no longer think of that last without B.J. Mirlu also crossing his mind. Everything was so confused and confusing!

The pictures in the Necroscope’s mind were automatic, instinctive; lacking an explanatory ‘narrative,’ they gave little or nothing away. But the girl - the
mind
of the dead girl who had not yet forgoten the agonies of her dying - seized upon one of them and clung to it.

And:
Bonniejean!
she cried.
B.J. Mirlu sent you!

And because she was part of Angelo Ferenczy, he heard her, too. MIRLU? RADU LYKAN’S THRALL? THIS ONE IS … ONE OF RADU’S? Then, his awful mind registered uter terror! His mental probes were immediately withdrawn; they released their grip on Harry’s mentality, writhing back from him as if he were suddenly white hot. And in a way Angelo was right: Harry
was
one of Radu’s.

Go!
The girl cried.
Hurry! You can’t help me. No one can. So go now,

if you still can. And tell B.J. - tell her …

But Harry never found out what he should tel Bonnie Jean, for at that moment Angelo exerted his telepathic power over all the shrieking multi-minds and closed them down, and the psychic aether was empty as deep space. By which time—

The Necroscope was in even deeper space: that of the Mobius Continuum, where he twirled aimlessly for what seemed a long time, before a co-ordinate surfaced from the whirlpool deeps of his metaphysical mind and he fled to its source: His room at the hotel in Paterno …

Harry woke up from an instantly forgotten nightmare, woke with a splitting headache, sweating and shivering and nauseous. But he fought it down and lay still, and in the light of a bedside lamp took in his surroundings. The hotel, yes. His room at the Hotel Adrano. In Paterno. Sicily.

It al came flooding back - or it didn’t, not al of it:

Le Manse Madonie, the treasure vault, the tear-gas -
and the money!

At that he came off the bed so fast it set his mind, and his body, reeling again. And his clothing stank of gas. God - no wonder he felt nauseous! He’d been hit by his own tear-gas! But the money … was it real? Nothing/eft real. It al felt like some badly fragmented dream, as if something was missing. So what else was new?

He hadn’t felt right from the first moment he got to this fucking place!

But after he’d opened the windows to his balcony, and then opened the wardrobe …

It was no dream, and nothing was missing. Not of his loot, at least. A burlap bag slumped over on its side, and a handful of gold coins slipped from the rim and set off on their diverse courses, wobbling across the polished boards. Their miled rims purred on varnished pine; they thumped heavily where they colided with the carpet trim and fel on their sides.

And in the wardrobe where he’d emptied his jacket -
bundles
of high denomination notes! A suitcase ful. Pounds, deutschmarks, dolars, in fifties and hundreds. And the Krugerrands: twin burlap sacks weighing at least thirty pounds each! Sixty
pounds
of solid gold!