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Harry Keogh Now: Ex-Necroscope

Harry woke up knowing that so or about to happen He was propped up in the huge old bed where he’d nodded off, his head against the headboard, a fat, black-bound book open in his slack hands The Book of the Vampire: a so-called ’factual treatise’ which exah all the ages tofor the Necroscope, and many of its ’well-authenticated cases’ little rotesque jokes; for no one in the world - with one possible exception - knew end, the source, the truth of vah That one exception was his son, also called Harry, except that Harry Jnr didn’t count because in fact he wasn’t ’in’ this world at all but so an old, troubled dreaone by with those of the here and now, turning them into a surreal kaleidoscope of eroticis (mental as well as physical) sexual experience; and of Brenda, his first true love and the wife of his youth; so that however strange and overlapping, these had been sweet and familiar dreams, and tender But he had also dreamed of the Lady Karen and her monstrous aerie in the world of the Wamphyri, and it seemed likely that this was the dreadful dream which had started him awake

But somewhere in there had been drea love affair, which because of its freshness was more vivid, real and inancy from some of the dream, and the cold clutch of horror fro about:love to the wo love to the Lady Karen, whom mercifully he had never known - not in that way

But Sandra they’d made love before on several occasions - no, on h rarely satisfactorily - always at her place in Edinburgh, in the turned-down green glow of her bedside lamp Not satisfactory for Harry, anyway; of course he couldn’t speak for Sandra He suspected, though, that she loved him dearly

He had never let her know about his - dissatisfaction? Not merely because he didn’t want to hurt her, ht his own deficiency A deficiency, yes, and yet at the sa of a paradox Because by comparison with other men (Harry was not so naive as to believe there had been no others) he supposed that to Sandra he must seem almost superhuer, before bringing himself to climax But he was not superhuman, at least not in that sense It was siet switched on to her When he came, always it ith some other woman in his mind’s eye Any other woman: the friend of a friend or soirl or other; even the sirl Helen from his childhood, or the wife Brenda fro to admit about the woman you think you love, and who you’re fairly sure loves you!

His deficiency, obviously, for Sandra was very beautiful Indeed, Harry should consider himself a lucky reen, subdued lighting of her bedrooreen And her eyes were greenish, too Or a greeny-blue, anyway

That’s why her part of this dream had been so different: in it they had ood He had been close to cli that so was about to happen

He woke up in his own bed, in his own country house near Bonnyrig, not far out of Edinburgh, with the book still in his hands And feeling its weight thereso maybe that’s what had coloured his drea, really: they’d coloured most of his dreams for several years now

Outside, daas on the brink; faint streah the narrow slits of his blinds; they tinted the atmosphere of his bedroom with a faint watercolour haze, a wash of subdued sub back to life, he felt a tingle start up in his scalp His hair was standing up on end So was his penis, still throbbing from the dream He was naked, electrically erect - and noare and intent

He listened intently: toresponded to its tiarden, to a world stretching itself in the strengthening dawn outside

Rarely sleeping more than an hour or two at a stretch, daas Harry’s favourite tiht was safely past, a new day underway But this tiazed intently through the faint green haze, turning his eyes to stare at the open bedroo with soft edges, fuzzy and indistinct There was nothing sharp in the entire room Except his inexplicable intentness, which seeainst his blurred vision

Anyone who ever started awake after a good drunk would kno he felt You half-knohere you are, you half-want to be so where you should be; and even when you knohere you are, you’re still not quite sure you’re there, or even that you are you Part of the ’never again’ syndro - not that he could re that invariably affected hi which had used to frighten hiht he was used to - was his paralysis The fact that he could not , he knew that, but still it was horrible He had to force gradualwith a hand or a foot He was paralysed noith only his eyes to coh the open bedroo So had robbed hi hi was in the house

That would account for his tingling scalp, his hair standing erect at the back of his neck, his wilting hard-on A perfu moved in the shadows beyond the bedroo caht in darkness

Harry wanted to call out: ’Who’s there?’ but his paralysis wouldn’t let hied partly froh the submarine haze he saw a navel, the lower part of a belly with its dark bush of pubic hair, the curve of soft feht show above dark stockings She stood (whoever she was) just beyond the door, her flesh soft in the filtered light As he watched she transferred her weight fro, her hip jutting Above the belly, soft in the shadows, there would be breasts large and ripe Sandra had large breasts

It was Sandra, of course

Harry’s voice still refused to work, but he could now ers of his left hand Sandrahim His dream was about to becoan to pound once more In the back of his mind, faintly, he asked himself questions And answered theot in?

Heso

Why didn’t she come forward more clearly into view?

Because she wanted to see him fully aroused first Perhaps she had not wished to wake hi to show hiressive? She’d taken the initiative before, certainly, but never to this extent

Maybe because she sensed his uncertainty - feared that he hts - or perhaps because she suspected he had never fully enjoyed her

Well, and ht eye to juht Harry willed his left hand to move, stretched it out, pulled the cord that closed theshutters - to shut out a little ht That left the rooreen stripes on a black velvet background And that hat she’d been waiting for

Now she s; a T-shirt, too, rolled up to show her navel Sexy, dishs, belly and navel floated towards hiot onto the bed, kneeling, her thighs opening, and inched forward The dark cleft was visible in her bush of pubic hair She was so silent And so light The bed did not sink in where she crept towards hian to lower herself onto hi as her body settled to its target He arched his back, straining up towards her but why couldn’t he feel her knees gripping his hips? Why was she so weightless?

Then, suddenly and without warning, his flesh was crawling Lust fled him in a moment For somehow -instinctively, intuitively - he knew that this was not Sandra And worse, he knew that he couldn’t rightly say what it was!

His left hand fuht flooded the rooly

At the sa open like aneedle teeth set in bulging, obscenely glistening pink gu lips to snap shut on hiony!

Harry screaed his head savagely on the headboard Galvanized, his hands stabbed out, strikinginstinctively at features which weren’t there!

Above the navel, nothing! And below the upper thighs, nothing!

She - it - was a lower abdoina with cannibal teeth which were cho as the thing feasted on his genitals and munched them up like so laring at Harry from the orbit which he had mistaken for a navel!

’And that’s it, Harry?’ Dr David Bettley, an E-Branch eazed at his visitor from beneath half-lowered, bushy eyebrows

’Isn’t it enough?’ the other answered, with soh for hts out of ing but that’s no easy thing to do It’s just that this dahtave an involuntary shudder

’Yes, I can see how badly it affected you,’ said Bettley, concernedly ’But when I say "that’s it", it isn’t to , was there any more?’

’No,’ Harry shook his head, ’for that’s when I actually came awake But if you mean more reaction to it? You’d better believe there was! Look, I eak as a kitten I’m sure I was in shock I felt physically sick, almost threw up Also, I emptied my bowels - and I’m not ashamed to admit that I only just made it to the toilet! I don’t mean to be crude, but that dream literally scared the shit out of me!’ He paused, slumped back in his chair and lost a little of his aniht

But eventually he struggled upright again and continued ’AfterwardsI prowled the house with all the lights blazing, with aeverywhere For an hour, two, until full daylight Andlike a leaf It was only when I’d stopped shaking that I finally convinced hter was shaky even now ’Hey! - I nearly called the police Can you picture that? I mean, you’re a psychiatrist, but how do you think they’d have taken my story, eh? Maybe I’d have been in to see you a day or two earlier!’

Dr Bettley steepled his fingers and stared deep into the other’s eyes Harry Keogh was maybe forty-three or -four (his body, anyway) but looked five years younger Except Bettley knew that his ain! It was a weird business dealing with - even looking at - a h For Bettley had known this face and body before, when it belonged to Alec Kyle

The doctor shook his head and blinked, then deliberately avoided Harry’s eyes It was just that sometimes they could be so very soulful, those eyes of his

As for the rest of him:

Harry’s body had been well-fleshed, ht, however, that hadn’t reat deal Not to Alec Kyle, whose job with E-Branch had been in large part sedentary But it had mattered to Harry After that business at the Chateau Bronnitsy - his ot it to a peak of perfection Or at least done as best he could with it, considering its age That’s why it looked only thirty-seven or -eight years old But better still if it was only thirty-two, like thebusiness, and the doctor shook his head and blinked again

’So what do you h asked ’Could it be part of my problem?’

’Your problem?’ Bettley repeated him ’Oh, I’m sure it is I’m sure it could only be part of your problem - unless of course you haven’t put me fully in the picture’

Harry raised an eyebrow

’About your feelings towards Sandra You’ve mentioned a certain a of potency It could be that you’re taking your loss out on her -her for the fact that you’re no longer’ He paused

’A Necroscope?’ Harry proed ’Buton the other hand you also seem ambivalent towards your loss I have to tell you that solad you can no longer talk to to’

’To the dead,’ said Harry, sourly And: ’Well, you’re half-right Soood to be just normal, ordinary Let’s face it, most people would consider ht But you’re also half-wrong’ He lay back in the chair again, closed his eyes and stroked his brow

Bettley went back to studying him

Grey streaks, so evenly spaced as to seened or affected, were plentiful in Harry’s russet-brown, naturally wavy hair It wouldn’t be too rey overtook the brown; even now it loaned hiave hie and esoteric subjects? And yet Harry wasn’t like that at all What, a black ician? A 20th-century wizard? A necromancer? No, just a Necroscope, a man who talked to the dead - or used to

Of course, he had other talents, too Bettley looked at hi, his hand to his brow The places this o there, and to return What other man had ever used an obscure mathematical concept as aa spaceship, or a ti at hi, merely stared back That’s what he was here for: to be stared at, to be exaood at his job, and discreet Everybody said so He had many admirable qualities Must have, else INTESP would never have taken hi for thereat deal, for Bettley was easy to talk to It was just that Harry so hated subterfuge

The doctor continued to stare into Harry’s eyes They were soulful as ever, and somehow defensive; but at the same time it seemed that Harry needed this close contact Honey-brown, those eyes; very wide, very intelligent, and (strange beyond words) very innocent! Genuinely innocent, Bettley knew Harry Keogh had not asked to be what he was, or to be called upon to do the things he’d done

Bettley forced hi,’ he said ’You would like your talents back, to be a "freak" again - your words, Harry But ill you do with those talents if they do return to you? Hoill you use theood and strong, not quite white, a little uneven; they were set in acaustic and even cruel Or perhaps not so le-minded

’You know, I scarcely knew , just a baby, when she died But I got to know her later And I miss her A boy’s best friend is his mum, you know? And well, I have a lot of friends down there’

’In the ground?’

’Yes Hell, we had soht it down ’Youto them?’

"They had their probleone in the world of the living Some of them worried a lot, about people they’d left behind I was able to reassure them But most were merely lonely Merely! But I knehat it was like for them I could feel it It was hell to be that lonely They neededme’

’But none of this explains your dream,’ the doctor mused ’Maybe it has no explanation - except fear You’ve lost your friends, your skills, those parts of yourself thatyour an to pay ly ’Explain’

’But isn’t it obvious? A dise - devours your core, the parts of you that make you a man She was Fear, your fear, pure but not so siht out of your own past experience You don’t like being normal and the et to be It’s all tied up to your past, Harry: it’s all the things you’ve lost until you’re afraid of losing anything else You lost your mother when you were a child, lost your oife and child in an unreachable place, lost so many friends and even your own body! And finally you’ve lost your talents Noto the dead, nonow ’What you said about va,’ he said ’Several things, in fact’ He went back to rubbing his brow

’Go on,’ Bettley prompted him

’I have to start some way back,’ Harry continued, ’when I was a kid at Harden Modern Boys That’s a school I was a Necroscope even then, but it wasn’t so I much liked It used to make me dizzy, sick even I mean it came naturally to me, but I kneasn’t I kneas very unnatural But even before that I used towell, see things’

Bettley was an e of what Harry felt and the short hairs began to rise at the back of his neck This was going to be ilanced down at a button on his side of the desk: it was still red, the tape was still running ’What sort of things?’ he asked, hiding his eagerness

’I was an infant when my stepfather killed my mother,’ the other answered ’I wasn’t on the scene, and even if I had been I wasn’t old enough for it to impress , and almost certainly I wouldn’t have remembered it And I couldn’t have reconstructed it later from overheard conversations because Shukshin’s account of the "accident" had been accepted There was no question of his having ht her there under the ice, until she drifted away And I saw the ring on his finger: a cat’s-eye set in a thick gold band It came off when he drowned her and sank to the bottoo back and dive for it’

Bettley felt a tingling in his spine ’But you were a Necroscope - the Necroscope - and read it out of your dead mother’s mind Surely?’

Harry shook his head ’No, because it was a drea before I first consciously talked to the dead And in it I "re I couldn’t possibly re it You know my mother was a psychicthat careater talent - as a Necroscope - developed, so this other thing was pushed into the background, got lost’

’And you think all of this has so to do with this new dreahter, no longer defeatist ’You knohen sooes blind he seems to develop a sixth sense? And people handicapped from birth, how they seem to make up for their deficiencies in other ways?’

’Of course,’ the doctor answered ’Soreatest musicians the world’s ever seen have been deaf or blind But what?’ And then he snapped his fingers ’I see! So you think that the loss of your other talents has caused this this atrophied one to start growing again, is that it?’

’Maybe,’ Harry nodded, ’s frouely, unforhtmares’

It was Bettley’s turn to frown ’A precog, is that what you think you’re beco? But what has this to do with vampires, Harry?’

’It was otten, or hadn’t wanted to reht it back to me But now I remember it clearly I can see it clearly’

’Go on’

’It’s just a little thing,’ Harry shrugged again, perhaps defensively

’But best if we have it out in the open, right?’ Bettley spoke quietly, clearing the way for Harry without openly urging him on

’Perhaps’ And in a sudden rush of words: ’I saw red threads! The scarlet life-threads of vaooseflesh crept on his back and forearreen stripes where the light cah the blinds,’ Harry answered ’The stripes on her belly and thighs, in the reen-tinted, alan to spurt they turned red Red stripes strea off her body into the di the blue life-threads of hu, waited, felt the other’s horror - and fascination - washing out froible flood tide Until Harry shook his head and cut off the flow Then, abruptly, he stood up and headed a little unsteadily for the door

’Harry?’ Bettley called after hi your time,’ he said ’As usual Let’s face it, you could be right and I’htened ofspecial any more Andfor me, but ’ probably isn’t But what the hell - ill be will be, we know that And the tie any part of it’

Bettley shook his head in denial ’It wasn’t a waste, Harry, not if we got soot a lot out of it’

The other nodded ’Thanks anyway,’ he said, and closed the door behind hiot up and moved to hisShortly, down below, Harry left the building and stepped out into Princes Street in the heart of Edinburgh He turned up his coat collar against the squalling rain, tucked his chin in and angled his back to the bluster, then stepped to the kerb and hailed a taxi A moment later and the car had whirled hihed Noas the one who felt weak; but Keogh’s psychic essence - a near-tangible ’echo’ of his presence - was already fading When it had faded into nothing, the empath rewound his interview tape and dialled a special nunal, then placed the handset into a cradle on the tape machine under his desk At the press of a button, Harry’s interview began playing itself into storage at E-Branch

Along with all of his other interviews

In the back of the taxi on the way to Bonnyrig, Harry relaxed and closed his eyes, leaned his head against the seat and tried to recall so of that other dream which had bothered him on and off for the last three or four years, the one about Harry Jnr He knehat the dream was in essence - what had been done to him, how and why - but its fine detail eluded him The what and how part was obvious: by use of the Wamphyri art of fascination, hypnotism, Harry Jnr hador cancelling his ability to enter and manoeuvre in the Möbius Continuum As to why he’d done it:

You would destroy ain, like a record played a hundred times, until he knew every word and phrase, every mood and emotion or lack of it, by heart Don’t deny it, for I can see it in your eyes, smell it on your breath, read it in your mind I know your mind well, father Almost as well as you do I’ve explored every part of it, reain as he’d answered then: ’But if you know that much, then you know I’d never harm you I don’t want to destroy you, only to cure you’

As you "cured" the Lady Karen? And where is she now, father? It hadn’t been an accusation; there’d been no sarcasm in it, no sourness; it was just a statement of fact For the Lady Karen had killed herself, which Harry Jnr kneell enough

’The thing had taken too strong a hold on her,’ Harry had insisted ’Also, she’d been a peasant, a Traveller, without your understanding She couldn’t see what she’d gained, only what she thought she’d lost She didn’t have to kill herself Maybe she was unbalanced?’

You know she wasn’t She was simply Waht it would be like killing a tapewor out a cancer But it wasn’t You say she couldn’t see what she’d gained Now tell ained?

’Her freedom!’ Harry had cried in desperation, and in sudden horror of hi in what I did! I’m no bloody murderer!’

No, you’re not But you are a man with an obsession And I’oals, your ambitions You want a world - your world-free of vampirism An entirely admirable objective But when you’ve achieved that aim what then? Willin you even asinso tenacious as a vah hierous you are to me? You know many of the secret arts of the Wamphyri, and how to destroy them; you can talk to the dead, travel in the Möbius Continuum - even in time itself, however ephemerally I ran away from you, froht for my territories and earned them They’re mine now and I’ll not desert them I’ll run no more But I can’t take the chance that you won’t come after me, daren’t accept the risk that you won’t be satisfied I’m Wamphyri! I’ll not suffer your experi for any ht come up with

’And what of me?’ Harry had spoken up then, even as he nohispered the words to himself ’How safe will I be? I’ before your va for me?’

But that won’t happen, father I’e; I shall control myself as a clever addict controls his addiction

’And if it gets out of control? You, too, are a Necroscope And in the M&ou you can’t do, nowhere you can’t go, and always carrying your conta, son?’

At which Harry Jnr had sighed heavily and taken off his golden mask His scars frohi his flesh as his father feared it would one day mould his will So you see we’re at stalee criasped out loud, now as he’d gasped it then Except that then it had been the last thing he’d said for quite some time, until he’d woken up at E-Branch HQ Whereas now:

’Whazzat, Chief?’ his dour-faced driver, puzzled and frowning, glanced back at hi? Ah surely hope so, ’cos we’re a’most there!’