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Upon Their Backs, to Bite ’e, soothing, doing what he could, and in so doing h to give the police soo she wouldn’t let hiain She hadn’t been there long, but already Penny had discovered that death was a lonely place
The Necroscope was jaded - or thought he was - by life, death, everything He believed he neededher he asked if she’d mind if he looked at her She told him that if it were anyone else she couldn’t care less, because she wouldn’t even know they were looking, not any longer But with Harry she would know, because he was the Necroscope She was just a shy kid
’Hey!’ he protested, but gently, ’I’m no voyeur!’
It wasn’t if he hadn’t if I was unmarked, then I don’t think I’d mind, she said
’Penny, you’re lovely,’ Harry told her ’And me? After all’s said and done, I’ you dohen I tell you that right now I’s It’s because you’re ry And now that I know you, I know that to see what he did would ry’
Then I’ll just have to pretend you’re ently took the rubber sheet off her pale, young body, looked at her, and treht down a sob It’s such a shame Mum always said I could be a model
’So you could,’ he told her ’You were very beautiful’
But not now? And though she kept fro over But in a little while she said: Harry? Did itin his throat, suppressed it, and before he left her said, ’Oh yes Yes, it did’
Darcy Clarke was still outside the door with the plain-clotheswashed out, Harry joined them and closed the door after him ’I’ve left the sheet off her face,’ he said And then, speaking specifically to - and glaring at - the officer: ’Don’t cover her face!’
The other raised an indifferent eyebrow and shrugged ’Who, ian, less than sy tae do wi’ it, Chief It’s just that when they’re dead ’uns, people usually cover the and nostrils flaring in his pale, gri face, and Darcy Clarke’s instinct took over The Necroscope was suddenly dangerous and Clarke’s weird talent knew it There was a terrible anger in him, which he needed to take out on someone But Clarke knew that it wasn’t directed at him, wasn’t directed at anyone but si hirabbed the Necroscope’s arently ’It’s OK It’s just that these people see things like this all the tiet used to it’
Harry got a grip of himself, but not without an effort of will He looked at Clarke and growled, They don’t see things like that all the tiet used" to the idea that soirl!’ And then, seeing Clarke’s bewildered expression: ’I’ll explain later’
He turned his gaze across Clarke’s shoulder, and in a tone more nearly civil now - more civilized? - asked the officer, ’Do you have a notebook?’
Mystified - not knoas going on, just trying to do his job - the other said, ’Aye,’ and groped in his pocket He scribbled quickly as Harry fired Penny’s na which, and looking even more mystified: ’You’re sure about these details, sir?’
Harry nodded ’Just be sure to pass on what I said, right? I don’t want anyone to cover her face over Penny always hated having her face covered’
’You knew the young lady, then?’
’No,’ said Harry ’But I know her now’
They left the officerhis head, and went up into the courtyard and the fresh air As they lasses and turned up the collar of his coat And Clarke said to hiht?’
Harry nodded, but in the next ot? Do you have any idea what you’re dealing with?’
Clarke threw up his hands ’Only that he’s a serial killer, and that he’s weird’
’But you knohat he does?’
Clarke nodded ’Yes We know it’s sexual A sort of sex, anyway A sick sort of sex’
’Sicker than you think’ Harry shivered ’Dragosani’s kind of sickness’
That pulled Clarke up short ’What?’
’A necromancer,’ Harry told him ’A osani, because this one’s a necrophiliac, too!’
Clarke so blank at the same time Then: ’Refreshsoht about it for a few , but in the end there was no way to tell it other than the way it was ’Dragosani tore open the bodies of dead men for information,’ he finally said ’That was his "talent", just like you have yours and I have or Borowitz and Soviet E-Branch at the Chateau Bronnitsy: to "examine" the corpses of his country’s enemies He could read their passions in the ht out of their stea brains and sniff their suts!’
Clarke held up a hand in protest ’Christ, Harry - I know all that!’
The Necroscope nodded ’But you don’t knohat it’s like to be dead, and that’s why you’re not getting it It’s because you can’t i about You knohat I do and accept it because you know it for a fact, but deep inside yourself you still think it’s just too way out to think about So you don’t And I don’t blame you Now listen
’I know I always protested I was different froosani, but in certain ways he and I were alike Even now I don’t like ad it, but it’s true I mean, you knohat the bastard did to Keenan Gormley - the ht about it!’
And now Clarke got it He snatched air in a great gasp and felt the short hairs stiffen at the back of his neck as an irrepressible shudder wracked his body And: ’Jesus, you’re right!’ he breathed ’I just don’t think about it - because I don’t want to think about it! But in fact Keenan knew! He felt everything Dragosani did to hiht,’ Harry was relentless ’Torture is the necromancer’s principal tool The dead feel the necro to the they can do about it, not even scream Not and be heard, anyway And Penny Sanderson?’
Clarke went pale in a ,’ Harry growled ’And that bastard, whoever he is, knew it! So you see while rape is one thing, and bad enough when it’s done to the living, and while necrophilia is so dead, what he does hits nes He tortures his victims alive, then tortures the it that they can feel it! He uses a knife with a curved blade, like a tool for scooping earth when you’re planting bulbs It’s razor-sharp and and he doesn’t use it for scooping earth’
It had been Clarke’s intention to stop at the guardroohost, he reeled to the castle’s loall Clutching its ht down the bile he felt rising frouts
And: ’Jesus, Jesus!’ he choked For he could see it all now and there was nothing he could do to cleanse the picture from his mind’s eye Weird sex? God, what an understatement!
Harry had followed Clarke to the wall The head of E-Branch looked at his holes in those poor kids, then makes love to the holes!’
’Love?’ the Necroscope hissed ’His flesh ruts in blood like a pig’s snout ruts in soil, Darcy! Except the soil can’t feel! Didn’t the police tell you where he leaves his se and his brow feverish, but he felt his nausea being replaced by a cold loathing al as the Necroscope’s own No, the police hadn’t told him that, but now he knew He looked out over the blurred city and asked: ’How do you know he knows they feel it?’
’Because he talks to the it,’ Harry told hiony and beg hiht: Christ, I shouldn’t have asked! And you - you bastard, Harry Keogh - you shouldn’t have told me!
With fury in his eyes, he turned to face the Necroscope and faced thin air A wind blew up the esplanade and tourists leaned into it, balancing theulls cried where they spiralled on a rising therer there
Later, with Clarke’s help, Harry fixed it that Penny Sanderson would be cremated Her parents wanted it, and it wouldn’t hurt them that it was all a show They wouldn’t know it anyway: that Penny was already ashes when their tears fell on her e curtains and became wood smoke
Clarke hadn’t wanted to do it but he owed Harry For a good s And he wanted very badly to catch theto Penny and too many other innocents Harry had told hied or spoiled by burned linen or charcoal - then I’ll be able to talk to her any ti i about the Necroscope could ever sees As the head of E-Branch he had that sort of power But if he’d known the whole story of what had happened at the castle of Janos Ferenczy, in Transylvania, ht twice about it And then not done it at all
He certainly wouldn’t have gone along with it if Zek Föener had stood firm on her first accusation? Or if not an accusation, a premonition at least
Zek was a telepath and as loyal to the Necroscope as they came In the Greek islands at the end of the Ferenczy business, she’d had occasion to try and contact Harry with her id But it had been a while before she could tell Clarke what it was They had been on the island of Rhodes at the tio, and their conversation was still fresh in his mind
’What is it, Zek?’ he’d said to her, when he could talk to her in private ’I saw that change come over your face when you contacted Harry Is he in some sort of trouble?’
’No - yes - I don’t know!’ she’d answered, fear and frustration audible in her every word, visible in her every move Then she’d looked at hi look he’d seen when she tried to contact Harry: as if she gazed on alien things, in a distant world beyond the times and places we know And he remembered that indeed she had once been in just such a world, with Harry Keogh A world of vampires!
’Zek,’ he’d said then, ’if there’s so I should know about Harry, it’s only fair that - ’
’ - Only fair to who?’ She had cut him off To whom? Towhat? And is it fair to him?’
At which Clarke had felt an icy chill in his blood And: ’I think you’d better explain,’ he’d said
’I can’t explain!’ she’d snapped at him ’Or maybe I can’ And then the empty expression in her beautiful eyes had filled itself in a little, and her tone had beco ’It’s just that every other mind I’ve touched in the last few days has seemed to be one of them! So maybe I’ve started to find them where where there aren’t any? Where they can’t possibly be?’
And then he’d known for certain what she was trying to tell him ’You mean that when you contacted Harry, you sensed - ?’
’Yes - yes!’ she’d snapped again ’But I could beat this very ht now, even as we talk It could be one of them I sensed God, it has to be one of them’
End of conversation, but it hadn’t been out of Clarke’s mind from that day to this When it was tiain, he had asked Zek if she’d like to visit England, as a guest of E-Branch
Her answer had beenanyone, Darcy And anyway I don’t like the idea that you would want to fool ht out: I detest the E-Branches, whether they’re Russian, British, whoever they belong to! No, not the espers themselves but the way they’re used, the fact that they need to be used at all As for Harry: I won’t go against the Necroscope’ And she’d given her head a very definite shake ’We were on different sides once before, Harry and ainst me or mine," he said, and I never will I’ve seen inside his mind, Darcy, and I know that when so like that to you, you’d better listen to him So if there are problems, well, they’re your problems, not mine’
It had been the kind of answer to make him worry all the more
Back in London after the Greek expedition, at E-Branch HQ, athe first few days back at his desk Clarke had cleared or at least begun to clear quite a lot of it, and had also ed to clear his hthts One in particular was very bad and very persistent
This was the essence of it: they (Clarke, Zek, Jazz Simmons, Ben Trask, Manolis Papastamos: most of the Greek teah) were in a boat that lolled gently on an absolutely flat ocean It was so blue, that sea, that it could only be the Aegean A s on the bluerefraction of a half-sun where it prepared to dip down beyond the slanting rock of the island into a short-lived twilight The serenity of the scene was i in it to hint that it was prelude to nighthtly event - Clarke always kneas co and where to look for the start of it
He would look at Zek, gorgeous in a swi a narrow sunbathing platform attached to the upper strakes at the stern She lay on her sto in the water And the sea so callanced sharply at her hand in the water, snatched it out and stared at it, gave a cry of disgust and tu! No, not bleeding, but bloody - as if it had been dipped in someone else’s blood! By which time the entire crew had seen that the sea itself was sullied by a great criated splotch like an oilslick (a bloodslick?) which had drifted to surround the boat with its thick, red ribbons
But drifted from where?
They looked out across the sea, followed the swath to its source Previously unnoticed, the warty, barnacled prow of a sunken vessel stuck up in grotesque salute frourehead was a hideous but recognizable face, , and blood spewing in an unending torrent fro led down out of sight into her own blood? Clarke didn’t need to read all of those black letters daubed on her scabby hull as they disappeared, in reverse order, one by one into the crimson ocean: O R C E N
No, for he already knew that this was the plagueship Necroscope, out of Edinburgh, contae ports of call and dooore! Or until, like now, she sank
Aghast, he watched her go down, then jumped to his feet as Papastaun The swath of blood beside the boat was bubbling, fu drifted to the surface A body, naked, face-down, floated up and lolled like sos And feeble as a jellyfish, it tried to swiun, and Clarke was starting forward, screa, ’No!’ but too late! The steel spear hissed through the air and thwacked into the lone survivor’s back, and he jerked in the water and rolled over And his face was the face on the figurehead, and his scarlet eyes glared and his scarlet ht for the last time
Which hen Clarke would start awake