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Sandra

Sandra Markhaure, and was a neophyte telepath As yet her talent was a fifty-fifty thing; she had very little control over it; it caht be just as well Sos she was sure had no right to be there - or in any sane mind, for that matter

She and Harry had o, and afterwards he had at once fallen asleep Sandra had coh: he’d stay asleep for three or four hours, which for hiht’s rest As for Sandra: she would have to sleep toht’s deficiency

Staring right into Harry’s pale, relaxed, aln as yet of the rapid eyeSo for now she too could relax It was Harry’s dreams whichherself, anyway

She worked for E-Branch Sometimes she wished she didn’t, but she did That was how she earned her daily bread (the ravy, too), so she really shouldn’t complain And in fact there hadn’t been tooAt first he’d been just another job - a new friend to get close to, learn about and try to understand - but then she’d got in deeper It had ’just happened’, and afterwards she’d wanted it to happen again, and again Until in a little while he wasn’t just a job but more a way of life, not only ’on her mind’, as it were, but under her skin as well And finally she’d started to suppose, and still did, that she was in love with hi on Harry’s case (she hated thinking of it like that, but it was the truth however she dressed it up) had beenrod on cases the police couldn’t solve That was how E-Branch used her, usually: to eavesdrop crih for the law to crack - looking for those da clues which more orthodox h work in itself, if only she didn’t actually have to go in there Because minds like those were often cesspools, which frequently left her knowing hoers smell And sometimes, especially if it was a brutaltime

Which was probably the reason she’d fallen in love with Harry Keogh Because his mind was a field of daisies entlest mind she’d ever coh there was soentle Harry wouldn’t , or anybody

With Sandra’s looks it would be strange if there had been no men There had beenshe could just switch on and off Indeed that was its one big drawback: without so ht a man would wine and dine you, take you hoain And as you were about to say yes his mind would open like a book and you would see hi satyr - and you’d be in there with hih

But that wasn’t all; there was also the deceit; the fact that people lie Like the neighbour in the flat next door who s,’ to you on the stairs, when she’s actually thinking: Piss off and die, you ugly bitch! Or the hairdresser who makes small talk while he does your hair, and you suddenly hear hi: God, they pay me nine pounds an hour for this! She must have more money than sense, the stupid cow!

Oh, there had beenones who only worried how they looked And the not-so-good lookers whose minds seethed with jealousy if anyone else even sh an entire week of evenings with a ’perfect’ companion, to have him make love to you and lie there beside you in your bed, wondering if he’ll have time for another and still catch the last bus home

It was life and Sandra knew it, and she’d learned to live with it ever since herhad first started to develop in her But it hadn’t left much room for ’love’ Not until Harry, anyway

He was suchan anomaly

She’d read his file, as well as his reat many That’s what it said in his file But it didn’t say he reretted alet the urge to go back and tell them he was sorry, but really he’d had no choice It didn’t say he still had nights he’d seen and done And anyway, Sandra really couldn’t believe half of the things credited (credited? Or better perhaps, ascribed?) to him Her own talent was paranormal, yes, but what Harry could do - what he’d used to do - was supernatural And he’d used his powers the best way he kne He had killed many men with them, but he’d never ht, and they didn’t think like Harry Keogh Their thoughts were deep and dark as red wine, but tuh sea, and full of shoals and eddies; while his were clear spring water over rounded pebbles Oh, his ers in there, if you gave him cause to whet them; but they were clearly visible at all times, not hidden away, neither afraid of themselves nor of detection No, there were no dark corners or mean streets in Harry’s mind Or if there were, he wasn’t the one to dwell on or in the there beside him, Sandra kne she’d defined his: either completely amoral, or naturally innocent And since she knew there was no lack of morality, that made him an innocent A bloody innocent, but nevertheless blameless A child with blood on his hands and on his conscience and in his nightmares, which he had chosen to keep to himself except when they were unbearable, when he went to Bettley Well, she wasn’t sure what that made Bettley - a Judas-priest? A father confessor who told? - but she couldn’t be happy hat itof all, she believed he half-suspected Which would explain why he was never completely at his ease with her, and why he couldn’t seem to enjoy her the way she wanted him to, the way she enjoyed him Christ, to have found a man like Harry, only to discover that of all men he was the one she probably couldn’t have! Not the way she wanted hi to throw off all the covers and leap out of bed, but caring enough that she wouldn’t disturb him - she carefully reonally across her and slid sideways out from between the sheets And naked she went to the bathroom

She was neither war Soe herself physically And that way perhaps to change her : she would walk to the park and watch the s of their worlds of faerie would soon find its way into her own far less Elysian existence And when that thought came, she knew for certain that for so pretty daative That she should need souilt

She drank a glass of water, splashed cold water up under her ar had made her perspire, towelled her flesh dry and exa bathroom mirror

Unlike Harry, there was little or no naivet�� in Sandra There ht be, except for her telepathy But it’s hard to be naive or innocent in a world where people’s es in a book, and you don’t have the power to look away but must read what’s written there The other E-Branch telepaths - people like Trevor Jordan - were luckier in this respect; they were obliged to apply, channel their talent; it didn’t just coo for theain, Sandra shook her head There she went again: great waves of self-pity! What? Pity for herself? For this beautiful creature in the mirror? And how often had she heard it broadcast, froive to be like her!

Ah, if only they knew!

But how ly ?

She had large, greeny-blue, penetrating eyes over a small, tilted nose; a mouth she’d trained to be soft and uncynical; sh cheek-bones curving down delicately to a rounded, rather self-conscious chin Of course she was conscious of herself Other people were, and so she had to be

Her right eyebrow, a slightly upward-tilted line of bronze, was questioning, al: ’Go on - think it!’ And so, involuntary on those occasions when she detected coh brow and narrow her eyes to knife-point at solance, then, Sandra’s face ht well be lossy, popular ladies’ azines But on closer inspection it would be seen that there were boundless tracts of character there, too Her twenty-seven years had not left her unblehter lines in the corners of her eyes, yes, but other faint lines lay parallel and horizontal on her brow, speaking volurateful that the latter didn’t detract from her looks overall

As for the rest of her:

But for two personal criticisms, Sandra’s body would be near-perfect, or as close as she would wish it to be She was too large ’up top’, which gave her a bouncing elasticity she was afraid

’Well, you e,’ Harry’s voice came back to her from a previous time, ’but I’, she’d wrap her legs right round hi his attentions Her large nipples, asymmetrical as most nipples are, seemed a constant fascination to him, at least on those occasions when he was all there But far too often he’d be somewhere else entirely And now another truth dawned on her: too often she’d used her sex to trap him in the here and now, as if she were afraid that if she released him he’d flysomewhere else

Suddenly cold, she put out the bathrooht and went back to the bedroom

Harry lay just as she’d left hiht arm draped in the hollow she’d occupied And still his breathing was deep and steady, his eyelids unlih which he drifted looking for a door It cahed There were always doors in Harry’s dreams, revenant perhaps of the Möbius doors he’d once called up mathematically out of thin air

He’d once told her: ’Now that it’s over I so it was all a drea I s back all too clearly what it was really like to be incorporeal, and I know that it happened for a fact How can I explain it? Have you ever dreamed you could fly? That you actually kne to fly?’

’Yes,’ she’d answered, in her hian Scottish accent ’Often, and very vividly I used to run down a steeply sloping field to take off, and soar up over the Pentland hills, over the village where I was born It was so exactly hoas done!’

Harry had been excited ’That’s right! And waking up you tried to hang on to it, you were reluctant to let the secret vanish with the dream And it vexed you when you were coain Well,’ (and he’d sighed as his excitement ebbed), ’that’s prettyI had in a long series of childhood dreaone forever’

Better for you, Harry, she’d thought That world was a dangerous place You’re safe now

But not ood for E-Branch, and definitely not why she was here On the contrary, they wanted his powers restored and didn’t much care how And she was supposed to be part of the restoration team

She slipped into bed with hi, and his free hand automatically cupped her breast His body was lean and hard, well-trained He insisted on keeping it that way ’It’s years older than me,’ he’d once told her, without an ounce of humour, ’and so I have to look after it’ As if it wasn’t his but so Hard to believe there’d been a time when it really wasn’t his But she hadn’t known hilad for that

’Ummm?’ he murmured now, as she ,’ she whispered in the darkness of the rooain, and instinctively drew her closer

He arm and he was Harry She’d never felt so safe with anyone before Hiups, and yet when she ith hi to a rock She stroked his chest, but gently so as not to awaken or arouse him, and tried to will him into deeper sleep -

- And like a fool willed herself there instead

Haaarry ! Harry’s Ma, Mary Keogh, called to hih to him She never could these days, and knehy, but it didn’t stop her fro very hard to talk to you He says you were friends, and that what he has to say is very important

Harry could hear her, but he couldn’t answer He knew that heto the dead had been forbidden to hi it, then once more he’d hear that irresistible voice in histhose commands by means of which his Necroscope powers had been made worthless:

Under penalty of pain, you reat pain Such torture that the voices of the teenition Such ain I’ve no desire to be cruel, father, but it’s for your own protection - as well as ht well have been the last - or they ht not The Wamphyri have powers, father! And if there arebefore they seek you out and find you before you can find them? But they will only seek you out if they have reason to fear you Which is why I now remove such reason utterly! Do you understand?

To which Harry had answered: ’You do it for yourself Not because you fear for me, but for you You fear that I’ll come back one day, discover you in your aerie and destroy you I’ve told you I could never do that Obviously e, Harry You could change, too I’m your son, but I’m also a va for me one day with sword and stake and fire I’ve said it before: as a Necroscope you’re dangerous, but without the dead you’re impotent Without them, no more Möbius Continuum You can’t come back here, nor seek me in the other places And yes, this is another reason why I place these strictures upon you

’Then you doom me to torture It’s inescapable The dead love me They will talk to me!’

They may try, but you will neither hear nor answer them Not consciously I hereby deny you that talent

’But I’m a Necroscope! I talk to the dead out of habit! And what about when I grow old? If I ramble to the dead when I’m an old man, what then? Am I still bound to suffer? All , Harry I say it one last time, and then if you doubt me you may try it for yourself: you may not consciously speak to the dead, and if they speak to you, you must strike their words immediately from memory or - suffer the consequences So be it

’And all the et that, too?’

You have already forgotten it! That is my most immediate stricture, for I won’t be invaded in , for it’s over, itisdone!

At which Harry had felt a terrible wrenching in his mind, which made him cry out; followed by darkness; followed by

His return to consciousness in London, at E-Branch HQ

That had been four years ago He had told E-Branch all he could, helped them complete and close their files on hier a Necroscope; he could no longer impose his metaphysical will on the physical universe; the branch should have no further use for him now But even after they’d tried and discarded every means at their disposal to return his paranormal powers to him, still he’d been certain they wouldn’t let it rest there As a Necroscope he’d been too great an asset They’d never forget hiet him back they would And so would hisdead Oh, Harry’s actual friends - his real co the Great Majority - numbered around one hundred only But the rest knew of hiht in their eternal darkness

And now one of the to speak to hiain:

Harry, oh my poor little Harry! Why won’t you answer me, son? He had always been her little Harry

’Because I can’t,’ he wanted to tell her - but dare not, not even asleep and drea For he’d tried once before, down at the riverbank, and now reone there within the hour of his return to his ho, the house which she had owned before him, and Viktor Shukshin in between Shukshin had drowned her under the ice, and left her body to float to this bight in the frozen river There she’d settled to the bottom, to become one with the mud, the weeds and the silt And there she’d stayed - until the night Harry called her up again to take her revenge! Since when she’d lain here in peace, or been gradually washed away in pieces But her spirit was here still

And it had been here when, like so one to sit on the riverbank and look down at the water where it was untroubled and deep and dark in that sloirling backwater of reeds and crurowing across the old, disused paths by the river; birdsong in the shady s and spiky blackthorns

There were three other houses there beside his oo of theardens extending al into disrepair; the third, next door, had been up for sale for several years now Every so often people would co their heads These were not ’desirable’ residences No, it was a lonely place, which hy Harry liked it He and his Ma had used to talk in private here, and he’d never had to fear that so here on his own, apparentlynonsense to himself

He hadn’t knohat to expect that time; he only knew that conversation was forbidden, and that there’d be a penalty to pay if he tried to break the strictures placed on his esper’sE-Branch hadn’t atteo so far Darcy Clarke had been in charge then, and Darcy’s talent had warned hi Harry, and Harry’s friends, too far

But there on the river Harry’s irl she had been, had not been able to resist talking to her son again

At first there had been only the solitude, the slow gurgle of the river, the birdsong But in a little while Harry’s singular presence had been noted And: Harry? she had come breathlessly awake in his mind Harry, is that you, son? Oh, I know it is! You’ve coain, Harry!

That was all she’d said to hih

’Ma - don’t!’ he’d cried out, staggering to his feet and running, as sonited a Roman candle in his skull to shoot off its fireballs into the soft tissues of his brain! And only then had he knohat The Dweller, Harry Jnr, had really done to hiony that you will never dare try again! That hat his vampire son had promised, and it hat he’d delivered Not The Dweller himself, but the post-hypnotic commands he’d left behind, sealed in Harry’s rasses by the river’s edge, painfully regaining consciousness in a world where he no beyond any doubt that he was a Necroscope no er communicate with the dead Or at least, not consciously

But asleep and drea ?

Haaarryhis h the endlessly labyrinthine vaults of his otherwise empty dream I’m here, Harry, here And before he knew it he’d turned off and passed through a door, and stood once again on the riverbank, this tiht And: Is that you, Harry? Her hushed mental voice told him that she scarcely dared to believe it Have you really come to me?

’I can’t answer you, Ma!’ he wanted to say, but could only remain silent

But you have answered me, Harry, was her reply And he kneas so For the dead don’t require the spoken word; sufficient to think at them, if you have the talent

Harry crued his head with his arms and hands and waited for the pain - which didn’t come!

Oh, Harry, Harry! she said at once Did you think that after that first time, I’d deliberately hurt you or cause you to hurt yourself?

’Ma, I - ’ (he tried it again, wincing expectantly as he got to his feet),’ -1 don’t understand!’

Yes, you do, son, she tut-tutted Of course you do! It’s just that you’ve forgotten You forget every tiotten what, Ma? What do I forget every tiet that you’ve been here before, in drearandson did to you doesn’t count here That’s what you’ve forgotten, and you do it every time! Now call me up, Harry, so that I can talk to you properly and ith you a little way

Was that right, that he could talk to her in drea alike - but it wasn’t like that now

But it is like it now, son It’s just that you need re each time!

And then another voice, not hismind proper:

You may not consciously speak to the dead And if they speak to you, then you must strike their words immediately from memory or - suffer the consequences

’My son’s voice,’ he sighed, as understanding came at last ’So, how many times have we talked, Ma? I mean, since it started to hurt an to answer him he called her up, so that she rose from the water, reached out and took his hand, and was drawn up onto the bank - a young woain, as she’d been on the day she died

A dozen, twenty, fifty ti) It’s hard to say, Harry For always it’s h to you And oh, hoe’ve missed you, Harry

’We?’ He took her hand and they walked along the dark river path together, under a full h a cloud-wispy sky

Me and all your friends, the teeentle voice again, son; a million more ould ask what you said; and all the rest to inquire how you’re doing and what’s become of you And as for me: why, I’m like an oracle! For they know that I’m the one you speak to most of all Or used to

’You make me feel like I’ve forsaken some olden trust,’ he told her ’But there never was one And anyway, it isn’t so! I can’t help it that I can no longer talk to you Or that I can’t remeet through to me? You called me and I came Was that so difficult?’

But you don’t always come, Harry Sometimes I can feel you there, and I call out to you, and you shy away And each tier cared, or had forgotten us Or as if, perhaps, we’d become a habit? Which you now desire to break?

’None of that is true!’ Harry burst out But he knew that it was Not a habit which he would break, no, but one which was being broken for him - by his fear By his terror of thedown on him ’Or if it is true,’ he said, more quietly now, ’then it’s not ood to you burned out, Ma And that’s ill happen if I push my luck’

Well, (and suddenly he are of a new resolve in her voice, and of the strengthening of her cold fingers where they gripped his hand), then so must be done about it! About your situation, I , son, and the dead lie uneasy in their graves Do you remember I told you, Harry, there was someone anted to talk to you? And hohat he had to say was important?

’Yes, I remember Who is he, Ma, and what is it that’s so important?’

He wouldn’t say, and his voice cae when the dead feel pain, Harry, for death usually puts them beyond it

Harry felt his blood run cold He remembered only too well how the dead, in certain circumstances, felt pain Sir Keenan Gormley, murdered by Soviet osani, a necromancer And dead as he had been, he had felt the pain ’Is itlike that?’ he asked hishis breath until she answered

I don’t kno it is, she turned to hi I’ve never known before But Harry, I fear for you! And before he could even attempt to reassure her: Oh, son, son, my poor little Harry - I fear so very, very much for you! Is it like that, you ask? And I say: will it be - can it ever be -like that again? And how, if you’re no longer a Necroscope? And then I pray that it can’t be So you see, son, how I’m torn tays I miss you, and all the dead er then we can do without it

He sensed that she was avoiding so ’Ma, are you sure you don’t knoho he is, this one who tried to contact ht now?’

She let go his hand, turned away, avoided his eyes Who he is, no, she said But his voice, hisout like that Oh, yes, I knohere he is And all the dead know it, too He’s in hell!

Frowning, he took her shoulders, gently turned her until she faced hiain, and said, ’In hell?’

She looked at hile cahtened up, swelled out, wrenched herself free of his suddenly feeble grasp He saw so, which wasn’t a hu worhed from her bones, revealed her skull, s shroud! She cried out her horror, turned and fled away froht and looked back A rancid, disintegrating skeleton, she laughed at him even as she toppled into the water - and he saw that her eyes glowed criht, and that the teeth in her skull were sharp, curving fangs!

Nailed to the spot - fear-frozen there - Harry could only cry out after her: ’Ma-aaa!’ But it wasn’t his mother who heard and answered hi ay, but still Harry whirled on the riverbank, staring this way and that in the ht There was no one there Haaarry! it cah! And it was just as his mother had described it: a voice full of hell’s own torment

Still stunned by his mother’s metamorphosis - which he knew could only be so she would ever deliberately engineer - Harry was at first unable to answer But he recognized the voice’s despair, its anguish, its hopelessness, as it continued to call to him:

Harry, for God’s sake! If you’re out there please answer me I know you shouldn’t, I know you daren’t - but you ain!

The voice was fading, its signal weakening, its telepathic potency waning If Harry was ever to get to the bottom of this he must do so now ’Who are you?’ he said ’What do you want of h! Help us! Its owner hadn’t heard hie with a wind sprung up along the riverbank