Necroscope: The Mobius Murders (6 page)

Hemmings slept in a room central between his father’s study and the room occupied by the terminally sick man. This arrangement would allow him to hear the old man if he stirred or cried out in his sleep. A fourth room, directly opposite his father’s across a narrow corridor, was in use by the Matron when she was there; which wouldn’t be until she returned late the next evening. On the night in question, however, Hemmings had his father all to himself…

In the dead of night, about two o’clock, Hemmings was disturbed in his reading of a well-thumbed book on metaphysics from the old man’s library by sounds from the room next door. He had read the same volume in his teens and even then found its contents risable, so that he wasn’t at all annoyed at having to lay it aside; he had always had his own beliefs with regard to ontology and such. Also, since it was almost time for his father’s sedative, he was hardly surprised to have heard these stumbling movements from the next room; but it did seem a little odd that the old man hadn’t called out, and there was something suspiciously furtive about the muffled sounds.

He immediately put on a robe, went next door and, on entering, discovered the ailing man up from his bed, fumbling his way toward the door in the darkness of the unlit room!

“Father, what in the world…?” As Hemmings spoke, he found the light switch by the door, turned on the light, then bundled the shivering old man back into bed and straightened the covers over his oh-so-frail form.

“My study,” his father’s voice was a hoarse whisper. “I…I have to…it’s in my study…but I want it here with me.” He did not seem to be talking to Hemmings; more to himself, as people sometimes do in their sleep.

“In your study?” Frowning at the other, Hemmings tried not to scowl. “What do you mean, Father? Now listen carefully: Matron is away; but I have your pills, and in a little while I’ll prepare your soup. As for your study: your mind is perhaps wandering, for there can’t be anything of any great importance to anyone—not any longer—in your study. Is that understood?”

The old man’s dazed expression suddenly changed; he became far more aware, awake, and managed to shrink away from his son toward the centre of the bed. “I was…dreaming. It was a…a nightmare, I think. And I just…I simply wanted to be out of here, perhaps in my study…or anywhere!”

“Out of here?” Again Hemmings repeated him. “Oh, don’t you worry about that, for you’ll soon be out of here!” And feeling nothing of remorse he went on: “Perhaps it’s slipped your mind, Father, but you’re sick. You’re dying!”

There was no answer as the old man’s eyes went vacant once again, and his bald, wrinkled head fell back onto the pillows.

In no special hurry, Hemmings went to fetch the medication and on his return saw that his father was more himself. He had managed to prop himself up a little, and his sickly eyes followed his son’s every movement while he half filled a glass with water from a jug and helped the old man to get the pills down.

Then, sitting by his father’s bed, he told him: “In a minute or two, before the medication works in earnest, I’ll fetch your soup.”

“I’m not hungry,” the other told him with a weak, wobbling shake of his head. “I’m…I’m tired, not hungry. And anyway, I can no longer keep food down. You don’t need—I don’t
want
you—to bring me anything. I’m just tired.”

Hemmings shrugged and said, “As you wish.” And he assisted the old man as he tried to ease himself down into a prone position; but even as he did so he sensed his father cringing from his touch. At which Hemmings’ already uncaring attitude immediately stiffened.

His father, as if realizing he had made a mistake, shrank further down under the covers and muttered: “I feel…I feel something of a chill.” And: “Cold!” he continued, even shuddering a little. “I…I feel
cold
!” Which was also something of an error.

That word again: cold! What, and did he perhaps feel
unnaturally
cold? Now Hemmings scowled, but nevertheless tried not to snarl as he grunted, “So then, I’ll get you another blanket.”

“Don’t…don’t bother…” the other answered, his cracked voice descending into silence. Then, as the pills began to work on him, his eyes closed and in a little while he lay still…

Within the hour, after Hemmings had thought things through, he went quietly to the old man’s study, entered and put the light on. It took only a few minutes to go through the drawers in the old oak desk, and find a sealed envelope addressed to his father’s solictors in Edinburgh. Hemmings had no qualms about using a paper-knife to open the envelope, for he suspected he already knew the nature of the contents. Sure enough it was a last will and testament…which made absolutely no mention of Gordon J. Hemmings, but simply said that the value of the house, together with certain monies, were to be divided equally between several favourite charities!

Hemmings searched the drawers again—more thoroughly this time—but could discover no duplicates. This was, as far as he could tell, the only document of the sort. And now it was his, and no other eyes would ever see it. As far as anyone else was concerned, his father would seem to have died intestate…

At ten a.m. Hemmings was awake; in fact he hadn’t slept all night but had paced his room, seething inside and feeling something growing in him until it threatened to spill over. Hatred? Yes, but it was more than that. Some kind of hunger? That was a large part of it certainly: this urgent, desperate need for…
something
, if only he knew what!

It was time for his father’s medication, but he didn’t take anything with him when he entered his elder’s bedroom and found him awake. Before that, however, as Hemmings passed a mirror in the corridor, he was brought to a halt, shocked at the figure—
his
figure—which he saw in the glass! Switching on the corridor light in order to view his reflection more clearly, he saw at once that despite the mirror’s dusty surface he wasn’t mistaken.

He was pale as a ghost, even as pale as his father, and his features were gaunt, haggard, while his jacket appeared to hang loose from his slumping shoulders! But then, he
had
been up all night, his hunger gnawing at him, yet unable to eat anything by reason of the bile now surging in him, his full-blown loathing of the miserable, thankless man on his deathbed.

Such were Hemmings emotions, the anger—and paradoxically the emptiness—that he felt inside, that he waited at the door of his father’s room until finally, under a measure of control, he was able to enter.

The old man was awake and alert, his sunken features etched with pain, but his eyes were on his son standing on the threshold. And Hemmings was somehow aware that those rheumy eyes had been fixed on the door for as long as he had been standing just beyond it. Then, as if in confirmation:

“I knew it was you,” his father said, his voice little more than a broken whisper.

“But I’m the only one here,” Hemmings replied, going to sit by the bed. “So who else could it be?”

Without answering his question, the old man said, “When you first came…came to the house, I was sure…I
knew
that it was you, before ever I saw you or heard your voice. It was your magnetism, a cold
suction
that I felt even through these solid walls!”

Though this was far more than his father had ever ventured to tell him before, Hemmings didn’t understand; not quite, not yet. “What’s that, you say?” he replied, leaning closer to the wasted figure in the bed. “Some kind of strange, personal magnetism?
My
coldness and ‘unnatural’ nature? Well then, what of
your
nature, Father? And why do you hate me? Because my mother died giving life to me? Is that it?”

“I don’t…don’t hate you. I wish I could have loved you, but not after what…what I saw. The doctor who delivered you, here in this very room, he seemed blind, oblivious to it—too busy bringing you into the world—but I saw it as clearly as I see you now!”

Fascinated and leaning closer still, Hemmings searched the other’s eyes and said, “Explain.”

His father shook his head however weakly; not in denial, in something of a quandary, seemingly at a loss to find the words. But with his shrunken, claw hands twitching where they clutched the coverlet, finally he answered: “Well, perhaps I owe you…owe you that much, if nothing else. I couldn’t have told you as a child, for that might have…
damaged
you further. And as the years passed I began to think, to hope, that perhaps I was mistaken. It was simply too horrible to accept as a fact…”

Then, after a pause to order his thoughts, he went on: “You were born here, as I’ve said, in this very room. But it was not…not a normal birth.

“I loved your mother, and had determined from the first to be there when it was her time. At first all seemed to go well; she was a perfect patient—even managing to smile through the normal but painful procedures—but as you began to emerge we could see, the doctor and I, that all was not at all well, far from it. Your colour was…it was wrong! You know the phrase ‘blue baby,’ said of a newborn child with congenital cyanosis? Well, that could have been you! You were blue-grey, almost leprous, and when the doctor saw how silent you were he looked at me and shook his head.

“But for all that you didn’t appear to be moving or breathing, still your eyes were open and your heart was beating, however irregularly! The cord was cut, the child hung by his feet and slapped, but still nothing. And again the doctor shook his head; except that second time your mother saw it, and she knew what it meant!

“‘Let me hold him,’ she cried. ‘Give him to me to hold! He can’t die!
I won’t let him!
’

“With that motionless child hanging from his hand, the good doctor would have denied her, but she screamed at him:
‘Give me my baby!
’ And he relented…would that he hadn’t!

“Your mother took you—my Annie took you—and held your still bloody body to her breast. She breathed on you; she tried to breathe you alive, to enhance what little life you were born with and
keep
you alive. And then, finally, you moved!

“But while she gave of herself, as was always your mother’s nature, you were only taking. Your little fat hands clutched at her, like greedy worms—
and I saw it
! The colour going out of her and into you; her cheeks, so pink and flushed, falling in a little as their rosy glow quickly transferred to you; her mouth falling open and her eyes glazing, just as
you
began to breathe and…
and slowly smile
! A newborn child, smiling like that!

“My God, you…you were healthy—but my Annie was dead!

“Finally I found my voice, and: ‘Doctor! Doctor,’ I cried. He was looking away, head bowed, cleaning his bloody hands over a bowl of water. He had done his job as best he could, but apparently he’d seen nothing.

“And there lay my Annie with a little of that awful hue on her, gone from me; and you, my son, cradled in her arms, suddenly warm and…
and pink
!

“So then, now I have told you…I’ve told you everything, except my thoughts on this matter. I believe it likely that you are some kind of mutant—but I do not say that disparagingly! For all God’s creatures mutate, however slowly, often over hundreds and thousands of years. In your case the metamorphosis was abrupt, a singular thing; but it was also unutterable, and morbid beyond words…”

Now Hemmings understood everything, and while listening to his father’s faltering explanation and final words he had edged ever closer, until finally he crouched spiderlike over the bed, his attention unwavering, rapt upon the old man.

And now his father’s eyes—which during the telling of his tale had been misty, unfocussed—lost their glaze and returned to something of sharpness, staring into Hemmings’ face where it loomed so close over him. For a moment transfixed, he looked—then gasped aloud, unable to speak! And:

“Oh?” said his only son, burning with such an inner hunger that it was no longer sufferable. “Is there perhaps something?” But while Hemmings burned, all the old man felt was the magnetic coldness that emanated from him.