Necroscope 9: The Lost Years (87 page)

A few minutes later, cresting the next wave of foothills, B.J. saw the rim of a ful moon, so pale it was almost transparent, rising over a hazy, blue-pasteled horizon. Perhaps it explained something. She hoped so, anyway …

They found a tea shop, sat outside under the trees, relaxed a little. And as they sat there, Bonnie Jean sighed and surrendered her problems to fate. What would be, would be. And anyway, who could second-guess

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the future? But this man, this Harry - oh, his attraction, his
power
over her was strong. She knew it could be argued that hers over him was stronger, but hers was artificial. Some of it. How much was real, she wondered?

She lay back in her chair, eyes closed behind the lenses of her sunglasses, and said, ‘Harry, you know you haven’t mentioned her in a long time.’

When he failed to answer, she opened her eyes a crack to squint at him. He was frowning, staring at a long low station-wagon where it had just pulled into the car park opposite the tea shop. She followed his gaze. ‘Something?’

Harry didn’t answer, just sat there staring. But as the occupants of the vehicle got out and headed up the path under the trees to the tea house, he averted his eyes, turning them on Bonnie Jean instead. And when the shuffling single-file of red-robed Asiatics had passed, he said: ‘I saw this bunch, or one like it, in London once. Other places, too.’

‘Hari Krishna types,’ she said, shrugging. ‘Pretty harmless, really. Do they bother you?’

The tinkling of tiny golden bells faded and died away as the group went into the cafe. Harry came back to life, smiled and said: ‘Bother me? Not much. They don’t talk to you or look at you. There’s no eye-contact. They just do their own thing.’

But after that he couldn’t seem to relax, and by the time the red-robes had come out of the tea shop and found themselves a table he was ready to move on. And B.J. noticed as they drove away how the frown was back on his face … how he kept staring into his rearview mirror long after the tea shop sign had disappeared into the distance behind them …

The roads were good and traffic light to nonexistent, but after their near-accident B.J. was taking it easy. If there was even the suspicion of a scenic ‘shortcut’ she would take it. And the closer she got to her destination the slower she went, stopping off at the slightest excuse -for the view, or a chance to dabble her feet in cool water over rounded pebbles - whatever. They even pulled off the road and slept for an hour, cuddled up on a patch of heather in the lee of tall rocks, where Harry had to fix a blanket over a couple of dead branches for shade. He’d done so protesting that there was hardly enough heat in the sun to bother with it, but B.J. was ‘afraid of sunburn.’

Finally, as they covered the last few miles to Inverdruie, the light began to fade, the mist crept up from the streams and writhed in the copses, and the wooded slopes took on a cloaked, mystical look out of legend. The lights of cottages clustering at junctions and crossroads twinkled like elf-fires, while the backdrop of the mountains, black against an indigo V of starstrewn sky seen through the pass, might easily be the fac,ade of a gigantic set on some cosmic stage.

The gloaming,’ B.J. commented, as she pulled off the road and turned tightly behind Auld John’s cottage, parking the hire car in the shadows of birch and rowan.

‘In which,’ the Necroscope whisperingly answered, ‘all the Jocks go a-roaming!’

The wee lads and lassies, aye!’ Laughing lightly, she got out of the car. (Ah, but if only her heart were as light as her laughter.)

And what about his … ?

Harry didn’t quite know what to make of Auld John, but then he didn’t quite know what to make of anything right now.

His heart seemed to spend most of its time in his mouth (which was why he made jokes whenever he could), and his nerves were stretched to breaking. He supposed it was some kind of paranoia, the latest attack of this ridiculous persecution complex.

But Auld John was … something else. B.J. had told Harry that the old gillie used to work for her uncle - the one with the hunting lodge -and that while he was very respectful and trustworthy he was also very proper. And maybe just a bit peculiar? Understatements on all counts, Harry thought.

The old man didn’t grovel but he came close. And not just to Bonnie Jean but also to the Necroscope. Bowing and scraping, he was very nearly obsequious - almost like a cringing dog who wants so badly to be petted but thinks he might be kicked. But as for proper: no doubt about it!

When Bonnie Jean went up to her tiny garret bedroom, the old man stayed downstairs with Harry; in B.J.’s absence he referred to her as ‘the wee mistress: a
verah
special lady!’ Well, and so she might have been once upon a time, Harry supposed - when she’d used to stay at her uncle’s lodge …

After a while B.J. called Auld John upstairs and for ten minutes or so Harry could hear them talking but couldn’t make out what was said. Then Auld John came down again and offered him a nightcap - ‘A wee dram shid put ye away nicely, aye! A guid nicht’s sleep cannae hurt a man.’ Maybe not, but the Necroscope refused anyway. If he was climbing tomorrow, he would need a clear head.

And when Auld John took Harry upstairs, he made a point of showing him the toilet, directly opposite the Necroscope’s tiny room. ‘Just so’s ye cannae be mistaken … ye ken?’ Yes, he kenned well enough. And the wee mistress’s room was at the other end of the corridor, with all those creaking floorboards in between. Wherever Auld John was in the house, he’d be sure to hear those boards.

But in fact they didn’t creak once. B.J. was far lighter on her feet than

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Harry. And the way she was able to manoeuvre her way around a dark house was quite remarkable.

So thought the Necroscope … while deep inside he didn’t find it remarkable at all. But he was glad she came anyway, on this night of all nights. It seemed to have meaning other than sex. Indeed it must have, since they didn’t make love but were content enough simply to lie in each other’s arms …

The morning was grey, overcast, and B.J. seemed pleased and in fairly good spirits. Pleased with the weather, anyway. The Necroscope couldn’t say how he felt: ‘odd’ might best describe it. They breakfasted, took Auld John’s car - B.J. didn’t say why - and headed south-west along a road that paralleled the Spey on their right and the Cairngorms on their left. It was early and the roads through the valley were empty.

‘How far?’ Harry asked as they turned onto the main road. His voice and mood were very subdued.

‘Just three or four miles,’ she told him … and then because she had been doing a lot of thinking and dreaming during the night, she abruptly changed the subject. ‘Harry, would you mind telling me your thoughts about life?’

‘Life?’ He was looking in his rearview mirror again.

‘Birth, life, death: the whole thing. I mean, how do you view it? You’re still young -
we
are young - but we get old, we die, and it’s all over.’

Harry knew all about that - knew how wrong she was, that death wasn’t the end, and it wasn’t ‘all over’ - but that was something he couldn’t talk about. Right now, though, he
could
lie; because without consciously thinking about it,
he
was in control of himself. But maybe he didn’t have to lie. That’s a bit morbid, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘What’s brought this on?’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she answered, trying to find a way to explain. ‘It’s just that as we get older, we seem to leave so much behind. Family, friends, even lovers - especially lovers. One partner is older, or gets old faster, and dies faster, and leaves the other to go on. It seems unfair, makes having someone to love seem pointless. Doesn’t it?’

‘Is this us you’re talking about? Are you worrying about the future?’

She sighed and said, ‘I ask a question, and you answer it with a question!’ She could switch him on, of course, and find out how he felt that way. But in their situation that would be … unfair? And what if she didn’t
like
the way he felt? But:

‘Very well, if it’s important to you,’ he said. The way I see it, life is some kind of learning process. We are bom, and we don’t know anything except we’re hungry. We grow older, and we start to learn things. Eventually we’re “educated”; we figure we know everything! Except life isn’t like that. The older we get the more there is to

understand, and less time to understand it. So that by the time we die—’ (which was something he knew all about) ‘—we’re only just coming to the conclusion that we don’t know any fucking thing!’
And then we really wise up - except it’s too damn late! For by
then we can’t tell anyone how clever we are …

‘But what if we didn’t get old?’ B.J. said. ‘I mean, what if we didn’t have to, if there was a way to avoid it?’ She knew she was treading on thin ice. She must be careful not to bridge the gap between Harry’s conscious and unconscious knowledge. It wouldn’t do to have the two start leaking into each other.

She needn’t have worried, for Harry wasn’t listening. Suddenly his knuckles were white where his fingers gripped his arm rest, and his gaze was riveted to his rearview wing mirror.

B.J. glanced in the central rearview mirror … and gave a start! ‘What the…?’

The station-wagon from yesterday, with at least two occupants from the red-robe troupe, was bearing down on them like a hawk stooping to its prey. And the way it was coming, it seemed aimed
at
their car, at them! So that a thought flashed unbidden through Harry’s mind:

Is this it? I saw their monastery. That was Kyle’s talent, warning me about my future. Are these people the
end
of my future? A bunch of kamikaze monks trying
to force us of the road? Is it as simple as that? And is that what’s been bothering me, somehow knowing that this was creeping up on me?

The car behind pulled out, looked like it would overtake. And B.J. gasped, ‘Is that what they are - all they are - roadhogs? What
idiot
issued a driving licence to this maniac!’ She gave way and applied her brakes … which probably saved their lives.

As the station-wagon rocketed forward and overtook them, it swerved violently to the left, cutting in on their vehicle. The collision between the rear end of the station-wagon and the front of Auld John’s car threw the latter to the left. The road ran parallel to a grass-and weed-grown ditch on that side, but right at this point there was a rickety wooden bridge that went angling off over the ditch to a woodlands track. Just how B.J. managed to control the steering and turn onto the bridge, Harry couldn’t say; it seemed more likely that the shock of the collision was responsible, that it had physically shifted the front of their car to the left.

In another moment the bridge’s boards were rattling and shuddering under BJ.’s wheels, and then they were into the woods and slowing down.

‘Bad driving?’ she gasped. That wasn’t bad driving. That was fucking
deliberate!’

Harry was looking ahead. The track curves right, probably back onto the road. Don’t stop but follow it through the trees. If it was deliberate they may be waiting for us.’

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‘So what good wil that do?’

He grited his teeth and said, ‘At least we’l
know
it was deliberate. We’l know to protect ourselves - and maybe to hit back.’

‘Hit back?’ She stamped on the brakes, stopped and threw open her door. ‘How? Harry, we’re in the middle of nowhere and unarmed. Wel, with one exception.’

In the boot of the old car: her crossbow. She got it, came back to her driving seat, passed the weapon to Harry.

He looked at it, and almost had to shout, ‘What?’ Because the ancient engine had decided to start racing.

‘You’l want to hit back, won’t you?’ she yeled. (For it had sunk in that they realy might have to. She’d been expecting something like this for as long as she could remember; had known it must come eventualy. But like this?)

‘Bonnie Jean, what the hell’s going on?’ he said, grating the words out. (Did it have to do with him - Alec Kyle’s talent - or with her? And if with her, why? She was an innocent, wasn’t she? But again, innocent of what?)

‘Oh, load the fucking thing!’ she snapped.

And as he made to do so:

Honk! Hoooonk!

They looked back. And there it was: the long, black, low-slung, now sinister-looking station-wagon. It was maybe ten to fifteen paces behind them, half-hidden in dangling foliage, its front doors open. And leaning on the doors, the driver and his front-seat passenger. Even as Harry and B.J. stared, the driver reached inside the car and honked again, then cocked his head on one side and smiled.

Harry looked at their faces - eye-contact - and knew from that moment that whatever this was it was life-endangering serious. In the dappling of the trees, their eyes were feral, ful of yelow, shifting light. And their grins were almost vacuous, like the grins of crocodiles or hyenas … filed with malice!

Almost unnoticed, B.J. had taken the crossbow from him. He saw the grins slip from the faces of the red-robes as they fel into crouches behind their doors, saw their slanted eyes narrow, heard the vibrating, electric
thrummm
of the crossbow’s string. And in the next split-second B.J.’s bolt slammed home into the panel of the driver’s door, burying itself deep.

The driver was inside the car now; straightening up behind the wheel, he caled out to his passenger. That one had reached inside the car, come back out with

… a machine-pistol? Almost of its own accord the Necroscope’s Mobius math commenced evolving on the screen of his metaphysical mind. But before he could conjure a door—

—B.J. had the car in gear, fishtailing as the rear wheels threw up a screen of dirt. Then they were round a bend, bumping through birch and rowan, and onto a bridge in worse repair than the first one! And